Womble filed a patent
application (aka applied to take ownership) on some Federal land under the
Federal Homestead Act of 1862,
which allowed people to take possession of a plot of Federal land if they
promised to build a home and live there.
Castle also filed a patent for
the land, but he made his claim based on the General Mining Law of 1872 (30 U.S.C. §22), which allowed people to take possession of a
plot of land if they found valuable minerals there they wanted to mine.
Castle hadn't actually found
any valuable minerals, but he had evidence that led him to believe there
was a good chance there were valuable minerals there.
Department of the Interior
officials concluded that Castle had made a valuable discovery, so they
denied Womble's claim. He appealed to the Secretary of the Interior.
Womble argued that Castle
hadn't actually found any minerals yet, so he shouldn't be allowed to
stake a claim under the Mining Law.
The Secretary of the Interior
affirmed.
The Secretary of the Interior
found that Congress had intended miners to get minerals out of the land.
The Secretary found that if
mining claims could be subject to other disposition, then miners would
not take the risk of looking for minerals, and Congress obviously wants
people to look for minerals.
This case is known for
defining the Prudent Man Test for
deciding if a mining claim is valid under the Mining Law:
Under the Prudent Man
Test in order to qualify as
"valuable mineral deposits," the discovered deposits must be of
such a character that "a person of ordinary prudence would be
justified in the further expenditure of his labor and means, with a
reasonable prospect of success, in developing a valuable mine."
Later, in United States
v. Coleman (390 U.S. 599 (1968)),
the U.S. Supreme Court refined the Prudent Man Test into
the Marketability Test, which says
that in order to be valuable, it must be shown that the mineral can be
"extracted, removed, and marketed at a profit.
