[Rockhounds] BLM & Forest Service Geocommunicator: Do you use it?

[DonH]

I went to the state BLM office today.  It was a great experience. 
First, they showed me the 1:100,000 maps I need.  Then, a specialist sat 
down with me to go over the land use in my area of interest.  She got on 
to the computer and used LR2000 to find the current info.  Then, she 
pushed a button and it opened Geocommunicator with an overlay map!  We 
talked about these programs, and she said the overlay of current leases 
was available because she had come through LR2000 first, so that's 
something to note.  I also showed her a few features I had learned while 
playing with it (in particular, the variable transparency feature for 
overlays).  Via LR2000, she also found the proper official documents 
detailing current land rights, and printed them for me.  Finally, she 
gave me a copy of the official guide on how to divide a township into 
pieces down to the quarter-quarter-micro-nano-pico section or whatever 
such nonsense is incumbent upon users of this baroque system (sorry 
folks, time and use have gained me no love of this system... give me UTM 
and a GPS, or give me death!)

For the record, for those who might care, the land in question is *not* 
private; in fact it is not even leased, the company has only purchased a 
right-of-way!  The BLM was also not impressed with the fencing as I 
described it, so the field office folks are going out to take a look.

Thanks for this thread, and all who have helped with the related issues!

Don



Tim wrote:
> The existence (or lack thereof) of the mill is documented in the LR2000
> reports, at least it is for the few mines I looked up. I agree that L2000 is
> a pain, but it is the official source of BLM mining claim information, not
> Geocommunicator. Once you have the reports down, it is easy to get all the
> information that the BLM has on a particular claim.