"A location perfected as required by law gives to the locator the exclusive right of possession of the surface ground and all the veins of every kind, not only the one located, but all others including spurs, offshoots, and cross-veins, the tops or apexes of which lie within the surface boundaries." 1

The estate of the locator of a claim, however, is both a limited and a conditional one. He has only a right to use the land, included within the boundaries of his claim for the purpose of searching for minerals and for purposes incidental thereto. He loses all interest in the property by failure to do a specified amount of work each year on his claim. The locator does not acquire a complete right to the use of the surface of the land for all purposes.

While the location of a mining claim withdraws the land from the public domain so that no rival claimant can successfully initiate any right to it until such location has been avoided and entry canceled, it does not divest the legal title of the United States or impair its right to protect the land and its product, by either civil or criminal proceedings, from trespass or waste, and the occupant has no right to cut timber on the claim prior to the payment to the United States of the purchase price of the land.2

1 Amer. & Eng. Ency. of Law, Vol. XX, note 3, page 722.

2 Teller vs. U. S. (C. C. A.) 1901, 113 Fed. Rep., 273.