Established January 14 of this year, the Chuckwalla National Monument is an area of protection that many are celebrating, although it faced pushback from small scale miners who worried their claims within the proposed borders would suddenly be useless. Reporter Heather Clisby circled back with Greg Herring, a member of the First Class Miners Club, who had expressed this concern when she profiled the group in December 2023.
In the weeks and months leading up to the creation of the new Chuckwalla National Monument, small-scale miners were nervous that the boundaries would bar them from accessing established mining claims, not to mention future diggings.
The proposed monument initially included not just the 660,000 acres northeast of the Coachella Valley, but the 20+-square-mile section in the Eagle Mountains that is owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). If that area had been converted to national park land, all claims would have been null and void as mining is illegal in national parks.
When the final monument map was released, the miners joyously noted that the Eagle Mountains – where 350 mining claims exist – were spared. (The area encompasses approximately 17,000 acres, northwest of Desert Center.)
“We gold miners were grateful that the Eagle Mountains, aka ‘Joshua Tree National Park Expansion Area’, did not get placed within the Chuckwalla National Monument as previously planned. And I want to send my thanks to all the thousands that supported us in achieving this concession,” said Herring. He stated that he and many others made calls to Congress, wrote to the White House and more than 2,200 people signed his petition.
“The local First Class Miners Prospecting Club, we have claims in these Eagle Mountains and have had them for about 30 years. We use these areas for family outings, to teach the rich California history of how gold started the rush to this state, and we teach how the gold miners of yesteryear went about prospecting, as well as how we do it today. Not much has changed for the small-scale miner, except we have a little more technology than they did back then.”
The main technological benefits are the 4WD vehicles to access these remote areas and the metal detectors that help pinpoint digging spots. Otherwise, these hobbyists use only hand tools, as the original prospectors did in the late 1800s. (Small-scale miners are ‘placer’ miners, meaning they seek gold that has already eroded from the lode, or vein, within the earth.) Herring also noted that for many disabled veterans, like himself, the small-scale mining has become an important form of communal therapy for those facing physical and mental disabilities.
But Herring believes there is still work to be done. “I am meeting next week with the Blue Ribbon Coalition (BRC) who fights a lot of these battles when the Antiquities Act is abused beyond what its’ original intent was and more land is locked up under monument designations than is required to protect those specific areas that, in this case, Native American sites that need to be protected. There’s been a lot of the abuse of the Antiquities Act over the years and the BRC is working to, along with the Congressional Western Caucus, to change the Antiquities Act. Let’s firm up those loopholes.”
Several monuments within the National Park Service (NPS) are managed by BLM because NPS recognizes that they simply lack the staffing, infrastructure, and funding to take it on. And, since it has already been determined that the BLM will manage Chuckwalla in perpetuity, the miners are asking to continue under BLM rules.
And while NPS rules do have a method of grandfathering existing mining operations, it is spendy to do so. The cost of such a permit could stretch from $1,000 to $100,000 per claim. But under BLM rules, that same permit could be obtained for as little as $100 a year, depending on the number of claims.
“So far, we have been successful in keeping at least the First Class Miners claims. I would like to go on and help with the support of the BRC and another organization called Public Lands for the People and see if we can’t get these other concessions in place so the small-scale miner can continue to do what they do.”
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