Free and Open: The 1872 Mining Law · Episode 3 of 10 · 40 min
The Law in Their Heads: Elk City, 1976
On August 27, 1976, three armed members of a placer-mining family ordered two Forest Service researchers off a study site in Idaho's Nez Perce National Forest, one of them the host. The episode follows the trial, the 1978 reversal on a technicality, and the folk version of the mining law behind it, running from Posse Comitatus pamphlets to the Sugar Pine Mine standoff of 2015.
Who's who
- Dick CarverNye County commissioner who bulldozed a closed Forest Service road in 1994
Where it happens
- Elk City, Idaho+5 more episodesMining community where local miners organized in 1974
- Nez Perce National Forest, Idaho+4 more episodesSite of the 1976 confrontation over a timber-study plot
- Nye County, Nevada+2 more episodesSite of the 1994 road-opening standoff
- Sugar Pine Mine, Galice, OregonGold claim occupied by armed volunteers in 2015
Timeline
- October 1974Elk City miners reported forming a Posse Comitatus, then stressed upholding the Constitution and mining laws
- August 27, 1976Three armed members of a mining family order two researchers off a study site
- 1977Trial: two family members convicted of simple assault, one acquitted
- April 1978Ninth Circuit reverses both convictions: researchers were not in the protected category of officers
- 1994Nye County commissioner bulldozes open a closed Forest Service road
- April 2015Armed volunteers occupy the Sugar Pine Mine in Oregon
Still debated
Testimony conflicts over whether guns were pointed: the family said they were carried for wildlife, the officers said all three pointed them. The reversal never resolved that. Posse Comitatus's founder is also credited to Henry Beach or William Potter Gale.
← PreviousFive Dollars an Acre: What a Miner Gets and What a Miner PaysNext →Walk Away: Half a Million Holes in the Ground
Connected episodes in other series
Measuring Trees at GunpointGround Truth: Forest Service Research · Episode 9
Gunpoint in the Nez Perce: The 1976 Patrin Mining-Claim StandoffPower of the County · Episode 5
The Constitutional Sheriff Movement: Why a County Sheriff Claims to Outrank the PresidentHomemade Sovereignty · Episode 1
The Big Burn of 1910 and the War on All WildfireThe Fire This Time · Episode 5