You may wish to know where to find the authoritative reading that sets out your legal rights and patent procurement procedures. The three principal sources are: (1) the pertinent parts of Statutes enacted by Congress; ²¹ These are controlling. ²² (2) the Interior Department Bureau of Land Management’s regulations ²³ which purport to explain the statutes; (3) the Bureau of Land Management manual²⁴ prepared for the agency's internal use and the guidance of its personnel. The manual is instructive to a citizen who is filing a patent application. Include with this the October 1976 releases of the Bureau of Land Management supplementing its Manual, as follows:
          No. 3860 Mineral Patent Applications Release #3-33
          No. 3862 Lode Mining Claim Applications Release #3-38
          No. 3863 Placer Mining Claim Patent Applications Release #3-35
          No. 3864 Mill Site Patents Release #3-34

          The problem is to prove discovery in a technical sense. It is not incumbent on the federal government to make a discovery for the claimant, nor to prove the validity of the claim. That burden is on the applicant. A valuable mineral discovery must be shown by your patent application. A mineral specialist must be able to determine from your application whether you have a valuable mineral deposit. The proof that you offer will be verified in the field by a mineral examiner.
Before preparing your application for patent and supporting documents, it will be necessary for you to gather your proof of discovery. The application for patent need not be in any particular form, but it must include the required information. The governing regulations are found in 43 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 3860.

          Initially, you will save money by assembling such proof as are readily available to you. Collect the information already known about your claim. Obtain under the Freedom of Information Act ²⁵ copies of previous mineral reports prepared by government agencies such as the Department of the Interior and United States Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. Literature of the United States Bureau of Mines and the United States Geological Survey and state agencies such as the California Division of Mines and Geology, should be researched and copies made of references to your ground and the surrounding area.

          Collect maps: Geologic, topographic and claim maps, maps of underground workings and assay plans. Obtain the history of your claim and of the mineral district in which it lies. Check the production records. If you have been operating the claim, compile records of your production and your operating costs. If you have not yet commenced operations, check the production and cost figures for properties of similar type in similar locations.

          Aerial photographs are inexpensive and may be obtained from many government agencies. Obtain stereoscopic pairs. This will give you a third dimensional look at your ground from the air. Sometimes you can get colored aerial photographs.