Regarding the 29% claims, they were obviously originally filed quite a while ago. They may have been grandfathered in with no fees, or the 29% owners may have kept up the payments. As far as finding the unknown descendants, that may not be easy. Remember, those claims were originally filed back in the 1870s-80s, and recordkeeping may have been hit or miss. Idaho wasn't even a state until 1890. Mining claims were often filed by transients who would show up, file a claim, mine it, and leave.

BTW, this whole issue of the "29% claims" has come up on iflub again. Never mind that SFMI has 100% rights to all but a few of the claims, and that RK has told people that the ore is being taken from the 100% claims. It's just one more lie or red herring to bring up every chance the bashers get. Peggy over there is particularly ignorant- for example he/she/it still doesn't understand what a 43-101 is despite it being explained numerous times over there. Really, it's about time to abandon that place. Notice that since most of the posters here have stopped posting over there, posts of any substantive nature are few and far between. If all of us would just leave that place, it would become completely useless, and no one would go there for information. All we would need to do would be to get IW to stop trying to turn the dark side and move over here.