[AT] Snow

[Indiana Robinson]

You have to be very careful about mineral rights contracts. Most want
to use a standard contract which gives them so much leeway it is just
scary. Usually they can do what ever they want to get to the
"minerals" including but not limited to clear cutting prime timber
land down to the last blade of grass. They can strip off the topsoil
and sell it. They can tell you verbally that they are buying gas
rights but their contract would allow them to quarry limestone out as
deep as the Grand Canyon...
They can also just tie your land up to keep some other driller from
ever drilling there while never paying you anything but the small
sign-up amount. They can tie up a LOT of land and only drill on one
piece in the center and using new horizontal boring methods they can
drill sidways to near the edge of your property and pretty much suck
out much of the gas from under it without having to pay you another
dime. It is already their gas and they only have to pay you royalties
on what they suck up through a well on your property. No well, no
money...
-
Going the other direction, That property in the next county I was
talking about was the site of the original grist mill about 1820 or
just before. The deed there includes full water rights that carry
forward with the deed "forever". Early mill properties were about the
only place where water rights were obtained on rivers here. My great
grandfather had a sawmill and gristmill both there. There was also a
very small factory about a mile upstream that used water power to make
small all wooden grain drills (one horse between corn rows) and a
second sawmill and gristmill about a mile downstream. I think they may
have been about the only 3 in that county. I'll have to check the old
atlas. Not a lot of reliable rivers there. The sawmill that was
downstream ended up in the Spring Mill State Park. The one at Moscow
was gone about 100 years ago and I don't know what happened to any of
it. My great grandfather also had a small wagon shop/blacksmith shop
there and a small fence factory both at the upstream end of the
property. They have also been gone about 100 years. I do have a few
bits and pieces out of the fence factory. They made a wooden picket
fence held together with twisted wire much like the old wood snow
fence but with bigger and pointed pickets. I can recall some of it
still standing around the village when we visited friends when I was a
kid.
A later miller had electricity in his house from the water power long
before the Village had power. My great grandfather
had a stationary steam engine that he used for power if the river got low.
OK, I rambled some more. Is it spring yet?
:-)



-- 
Have you hugged your horses today?

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com