"The origin of mining districts and of their rules was in the mining camps of California, in 1849, before any territorial form of government had been established and the same system was followed and prevailed wherever valuable discoveries in other sections induced an influx of prospectors.

' 'Practically all the Pacific slope and the land east of the mountains to the Missouri River was then public domain. The vast ore bodies of the Comstock, the wealth of the Alder Gulch, the veins and placers of Pike's Peak, and of countless intermediate mineral localities were all appropriated and their values extracted under the protection of this form of local self-government for many years, with no paternal interference by the National Legislature.

2 Amer. & Eng. Ency. of Law, Vol. XX, p. 685; Johnson vs. McLaughlin, 1 Ariz., 493; People vs. District Ct., 11 Colo., 147; In re Monk, 16 Utah, 100.

"Each local camp called itself a mining district as defined by the action of a mass meeting of the miners. Some of them were less than a mile square, others quite extensive, and they have become permanent geographical divisions for purpose of description in the conveyance of real estate of all kinds in the mining counties.

"After defining the name and local extent of the district, these meetings usually designated certain officials to be elected from time to time, and then proceeded to adopt rules regulating the size of claims, prerequisites of location and for annual labor or periodical representation in some form.

"Before the territorial organizations were complete, and while the diggings were remote from organized society, they often took a much wider scope and provisions were made for executive officers, for miners' courts, and covering all sorts of subjects. But these incidents have long since ceased.

"Where the districts, as quasi municipal organizations have been abandoned, provisions have generally been made to preserve their records in the County Recorder's office.

"With almost no interference by State or Territorial Acts, they were mining laws of the land until the Act of Congress of July 26, 1866. This but slightly limited their authority, but the Act of May 10, 1872, covered so many essential incidents, and has been so supplemented by State and Territorial legislation, that they have been gradually abandoned, and survive now only as a name or description.

"Only in California, Utah and Alaska are the organizations still preserved to any extent. Where not extinct, their existence is practically confined to the keeping of district records for the registry of locations, with regulations defining the size of claims and details of location. Undoubtedly where there is no State or Territorial Statute, a district can yet be organized, and details of location fixed by its rules, but any attempt to revive old districts or enact new district rules in any State or Territory which has any pretense of a mining code would only tend to confusion.

"The details of these rules were not altogether arbitrary or experimental. In many respects they followed precedents already long established in Spain and Mexico. The requirements of discovery and discovery shaft, of sinking and record, periodical labor, forfeiture, for non-representation and many others, are duplicates more or less close, of like provisions of the Royal Code of 1783, but enacted by these local conventions of practical miners in entire ignorance of the existence of such code." 3

The existence of a district mining law is a question of fact for the jury.4 District rules once proved are presumed to continue.5