## Facts

- In 1937, The Stearns Company conveyed 46,842.4 acres in Wayne and McCreary Counties, Kentucky, to the United States for inclusion in a national forest under the Weeks Act framework.
- The deed reserved certain mineral rights to Stearns and expressly addressed hydraulic mining, but did not expressly mention strip mining.
- At the time of the 1937 conveyance, Stearns was not generally engaged in strip mining, and the land was not well-suited to strip-mining methods then available.
- Stearns first sought federal permission to strip mine in 1954; the Secretary of Agriculture denied the request in 1955 on public-interest grounds rather than by resolving the deed’s legal scope.
- In 1976, Stearns sought to strip mine a 19-acre tract partly within the national forest; the Forest Service denied permission on the grounds that (i) the deed did not confer a strip-mining right and (ii) federal law governing surface coal mining barred or limited strip mining on national forest land.
- After obtaining a state permit, Stearns filed a federal declaratory-judgment action in 1978 asserting a reserved right to strip mine; the United States filed a declaratory-judgment action seeking a contrary declaration, and the cases were consolidated for trial.

## Issues

1. Whether the 1937 mineral reservation included a right to conduct strip mining on the conveyed lands.
2. Whether strip mining, as proposed decades later, exceeded the reservation by materially impairing or destroying the surface estate acquired for national forest purposes.
3. Whether federal mining and conservation statutes, including the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, independently barred or limited the proposed strip mining on national forest land.

## Decision

- The court entered declaratory judgment for the United States.
- The court held that Stearns’ 1937 mineral reservation did not include a right to strip mine on the national forest land.
- The court rejected the claim that a general mineral reservation automatically authorizes later-developed extraction methods when such methods would substantially destroy the surface estate and defeat the purpose of the federal acquisition.
- The court further concluded that federal statutory restrictions on surface coal mining on national forest land reinforced the inability to proceed with strip mining.

## Legal Principles

- The scope of a mineral reservation is determined by deed interpretation focused on the parties’ intent at the time of conveyance, informed by then-existing mining practices and technological feasibility.
- Absent clear deed language, reserved mineral rights are construed not to authorize extraction methods that would materially destroy the surface estate or frustrate the principal purpose of the surface grant.
- Express inclusion or exclusion of particular mining methods in a deed may support an inference that unmentioned, materially different methods were not reserved.
- Even where a private party retains mineral interests, federal statutes and implementing regulations governing mining on federal lands may limit or prohibit surface mining activities within national forests.

## Conclusion

The court declared that Stearns’ mineral reservation in its 1937 conveyance to the United States did not include the right to strip mine within the national forest, and that the proposed strip-mining operation could not proceed in light of the deed’s intended scope and applicable federal restrictions on surface coal mining on national forest land.


United States v. Stearns Co., 595 F. Supp. 808 (E.D. Ky. 1984)