New Hampshire mineral rights

New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated, table of contents

Nothing read for this record ends a New Hampshire mineral interest because nobody used it. There is no dormant mineral act and no marketable record title act, so there is no period of inactivity to survive, nothing to record that would preserve anything, and no notice of lapse for anybody to serve. The more useful finding for anybody about to go searching is structural. New Hampshire has no title of its statutes named for minerals, mining, oil or gas. Extraction is dealt with in two places that are not about minerals as such: RSA 155-E, Local Regulation of Excavations, which sits in the public safety and welfare title, and RSA 72-B, the excavation tax, which sits in the taxation title. There is a chapter called Mining and Reclamation at RSA 12-E in the title about the state and its government. What can still move a New Hampshire interest is what can move one anywhere, a conveyance or a tax sale, together with adverse possession on the twenty year rule dealt with separately on this page.

Checked August 3, 2026. Established on 2026-08-03 by enumeration with controls and not by any search. Two layers. FIRST, the whole code at title level: the table of contents of the Revised Statutes Annotated was fetched and parsed into 67 title numbers and names, and MINERAL, MINING, OIL and GAS appear in none of them. New Hampshire's titles run from The State and its Government through Boundaries Fences and Common Fields, Conveyances and Mortgages of Realty, Homesteads, Water Management and Protection, and end at Planning and Zoning; there is no minerals title and no natural resources title. SECOND, title XLVIII, Conveyances and Mortgages of Realty, which is where a dormant mineral act or a marketable title act would be codified: its six chapters are Conveyances of Realty and Interests Therein, Registers of Deeds, the Uniform Real Property Electronic Recording Act, Mortgages of Realty, Unit Ownership of Real Property, and Foreclosure Consultants and Pre-Foreclosure Conveyances. Chapter 477 was then fetched whole, 94,985 characters, and counted: DORMANT returns 0 and MARKETABLE returns 0, against controls of RECORD 78. MINERAL returns exactly 1 and SEVER 1, and both were inspected: the single MINERAL hit is in a definition of acts detrimental to retaining land for agricultural use, listing the removal of loam, sod, peat, gravel, soil, rock or other mineral substance, and it is not about ownership at all. THE LIMIT: a name-level count over the code plus a whole-chapter read of the conveyancing chapter cannot exclude a provision inside a chapter whose title does not disclose it, and no New Hampshire decision was read. The quote attached is the general limitation on real actions, because there is no dormancy provision to quote and twenty years is the only outside limit found.

RSA 155-E:1, Definitions

New Hampshire defines the substance rather than the estate. Earth means sand, gravel, rock, soil or construction aggregate produced by quarrying, crushing or any other mining activity, or such other naturally occurring unconsolidated materials that normally mask the bedrock. An excavation means a land area which is used, or has been used, for the commercial taking of earth, including all slopes. An excavation site means any area of contiguous land in common ownership on which excavation takes place, and an excavation area means the surface area within a site where excavation has occurred or is eligible to occur. And then the exclusion that matters most in this state. Dimension stone means rock that is cut, shaped or selected for use in blocks, slabs, sheets or other construction units of specified shapes or sizes and used for external or interior parts of buildings, foundations, curbing, paving, flagging, bridges, revetments, or for other architectural or engineering purposes, including quarry blocks from which sections of dimension stone are to be produced. Dimension stone does not include earth as defined in the same section.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSA 155-E:1 on 2026-08-03. Two things follow and the second is the reason this rule is on the page at all. The definition is functional and physical rather than economic: it turns on what the material IS and on the fact that it normally masks the bedrock, which is a geologist's test rather than a lawyer's, and it is the opposite end of the spectrum from Maine, read the same day, which defines a metallic mineral by whether a metal is the ECONOMICALLY VALUABLE CONSTITUENT regardless of the chemical end product. AND DIMENSION STONE IS OUT. Rock cut or selected for building blocks, slabs, curbing, paving, flagging, bridges or revetments is expressly not earth, so in the state whose nickname is the Granite State the granite that gets quarried in blocks falls outside the excavation permit regime in this chapter and outside the two cent per cubic yard excavation tax that RSA 72-B builds on the same definition. Crushed rock is earth; a cut block of the same rock is not. Compare how other states here draw their line. Hawaii lists substances and then excludes the sand, rock and gravel used in general construction, which is most of what Hawaii digs. Maine includes only metallic minerals. New Hampshire includes what those two exclude and excludes what New Hampshire is famous for. WHAT IS NOT READ: RSA 12-E, Mining and Reclamation, which is a separate chapter in a different title and may reach dimension stone; and whether any statute governs the severance of a mineral estate in New Hampshire at all, which nothing read answers.

RSA 72-B:2, Definitions

New Hampshire's tax statute defines owner in three limbs, and the second is the one that recognises a severed interest. Owner means any person who owns the land upon which earth is excavated; a previous owner who retains earth excavation rights to the land, or any person who has purchased earth excavation rights, and has registered a claim with the registry of deeds; or any person who has purchased excavated earth or excavation rights on public lands, or removes earth from a public right of way. So the interest that can be split off from a New Hampshire parcel is not called a mineral estate and is not called minerals: it is an earth excavation right, it can be retained by a seller or bought by a stranger, and the condition on which the holder becomes the taxpayer rather than the landowner is that they have registered a claim with the registry of deeds. The excavation tax is then assessed against the owner so defined, at two cents per cubic yard, by the local assessing officials within thirty days after they receive a report of excavated material.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSA 72-B:2, VIII on 2026-08-03, with the assessment at 72-B:4. This is as close as New Hampshire law read here comes to acknowledging a severed interest in what is under the ground, and the shape of it is worth noticing precisely because it is not the shape every other state on this record uses. Elsewhere the severed thing is a mineral estate, an interest in land, and the recording system decides priority between competing claims to it. Here the severed thing is a RIGHT TO EXCAVATE EARTH, and registration at the registry of deeds is written into a TAX definition, where its function is to identify the person who owes two cents a cubic yard. Nothing read says what a registered claim looks like, what it must contain, or what happens between two people who both claim excavation rights. The limb also does something useful for a landowner who sold the right and kept the land: a PREVIOUS OWNER WHO RETAINS earth excavation rights is an owner for the tax, so retaining the right retains the liability. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any New Hampshire statute governs the creation of such a right, how it is conveyed, whether it can lapse, and whether the registry keeps any separate index of them. Chapter 477 was read in full and does not mention them.

RSA 72-B:1, Excavation Tax and Taxation of Excavation Area

Earth is exempt from taxation as real property under the general property tax sections, and an excavation tax is assessed instead upon the excavation of earth against the owner, at the rate of two cents per cubic yard excavated. Excavations and excavation areas are then taxed as real property independently of any earth contained in them, and four things are excluded from the excavation area for that purpose: an excavation reclaimed in accordance with RSA 155-E; an excavation area of exposed rock ledge not subject to reclamation and not excavated during the preceding tax year, unless it was the subject of an intent filed during that year or of a permit; an excavation that ceased commercially useful operation before 24 August 1977; and areas ancillary to the excavation, meaning offices, scale buildings, manufacturing and preparation plants, storage areas, settling ponds, haulage ways and roadways. The excavation tax itself has five exemptions: earth put back on the same or a contiguous commonly owned parcel within the same tax year; earth used exclusively for agriculture or forest management by the landowner in New Hampshire; any excavation on a parcel not exceeding a thousand cubic yards in a tax year, which still requires a notice of intent to excavate; excavation solely necessary for a foundation or septic system or incidental to other construction and not removing more than a thousand cubic yards; and excavation by government for its own use on its own land. The owner must give the assessing officials whatever information they require to determine the taxable excavation area.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSA 72-B:1 on 2026-08-03, sourced to 1997 c. 219 with amendments in 1999, 2001 and 2002. THE STRUCTURE IS THE FINDING, not the number, and the first draft of this note got the comparison wrong and is corrected here. A per unit charge is NOT unique on this record: Florida taxes phosphate rock at a flat rate per bone dry ton and heavy minerals at a base rate per ton indexed to a producer price index, and charges gas on a base rate per thousand cubic feet; California imposes a uniform rate per barrel of oil and per ten thousand cubic feet of gas; and Indiana takes whichever of a percentage and a per unit figure produces the larger tax. What New Hampshire's does that none of theirs does is carry NO value component whatever, so it does not move with price and a boom does not raise it. And the swap is explicit: earth comes OUT of the property tax base and the two cents goes in, so this is not an additional charge layered on top of the ordinary property tax but a substitute for it, which is a different bargain from Alabama's, where a severed interest comes off the roll for a few cents an acre paid once at the courthouse. The separate taxation of the excavation AREA as real property is the other half and it gives an owner something to act on: an excavation reclaimed in accordance with RSA 155-E is excluded from the area, so reclamation reduces the assessment rather than only discharging a permit condition. Note the thousand cubic yard line, which appears twice and does different work each time: it exempts from the tax, and it does NOT exempt from the notice of intent to excavate under RSA 72-B:8. WHAT IS NOT READ: RSA 72-B:5 to 72-B:16, so the report of excavated material, the interest, the excavation tax lien, the notice of intent itself and the enforcement fee were all seen only by cross reference.

RSA 155-E:1 and 155-E:2, Local Regulation of Excavations

No owner may permit any excavation of earth on their premises without first obtaining a permit, subject to exceptions for excavations that lawfully existed as of 24 August 1979 and from which commercially useful quantities had been removed in the two years before that date. Such a pre-existing excavation site is exempt from local zoning or similar ordinances regulating its location, provided it complied with whatever ordinances were in effect when it was first begun, but the excavation area may not be expanded beyond the limits of the town without a permit. The body that grants the permit is not a state agency. The regulator is defined as the planning board of the city or town, or, where a town at an annual or special meeting duly warned for the purpose so provides, the selectmen of the town or the board of adjustment; or where there is no planning board, the selectmen of the town or the legislative body of the city; or where the land area is in an unincorporated place, the county commissioners.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSA 155-E:1, III and 155-E:2 on 2026-08-03. Every other state on this record answers the question WHO REGULATES with the name of a state body: a department of environmental protection or quality, a geological survey, an oil and gas commission or conservation council, a department of natural resources or of lands. New Hampshire answers it with the town, and the chapter's own title says so, being Local Regulation of Excavations. That has a consequence for a reader which the statute does not state and this page will: there is no single place to look. The permit file for an excavation next to a New Hampshire parcel is at the municipal offices of that municipality, decided by whichever of three or four bodies that municipality uses, and no state database was found that aggregates them. Set that beside South Carolina's Active Mines Viewer and Missouri's map of permitted mine sites, both read the same day, and the difference in what an owner can find out in an afternoon is large. WHAT IS NOT READ, and it is a real gap on the topic this rule sits under: the rest of RSA 155-E, so what standards a regulator applies, what notice an abutter gets, whether an abutter can object, and what reclamation is required were all seen only in outline or by cross reference. No negative about surface owner protection is published for New Hampshire.

RSA 477:7, Validity

Two sections say it twice and slightly differently, and both are in force. No deed of bargain and sale, mortgage or other conveyance of real estate, and no lease for more than seven years from its making, is valid to hold the same against any person but the grantor and the grantor's heirs only, unless the deed or lease is acknowledged and recorded according to the chapter. And separately, every deed or other conveyance of real estate, and every court order or other instrument which affects title to any interest in real estate, except probate records and tax liens exempt by law from recording, must be recorded at length in the registry of deeds for the county or counties in which the real estate lies, and is not effective as against bona fide purchasers for value until so recorded. Real estate may be conveyed by deed executed by any person or their attorney, acknowledged and recorded as the chapter directs, without any other act or ceremony whatever, and a conveyance not executed under seal is as effectual as though sealed.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSA 477:7, 477:3-a and 477:1 on 2026-08-03. RSA 477:7 traces to the Revised Statutes and was last touched in 1988; RSA 477:3-a was added in 1975. The two formulations are worth holding apart because they protect different classes. RSA 477:7 says an unrecorded conveyance holds nothing against ANY PERSON but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, which on its face is harsher than a notice statute and closer to a race rule, since it does not ask what the other person knew. RSA 477:3-a says an unrecorded instrument is not effective as against BONA FIDE PURCHASERS FOR VALUE, which does. This record read the text of both and does not attempt to reconcile them, because reconciling them is a question of New Hampshire decisions and none was fetched, so no label of notice, race or race notice is applied to this state at all. What can be said without any decision is the practical instruction, which is the same either way: record. Note also the SEVEN YEAR lease line, which is longer than the one year in Idaho and the two years in Maine, and the requirement to record in EACH county the real estate lies in. WHAT IS NOT READ: any New Hampshire decision on the relationship between 477:7 and 477:3-a, and whether possession gives inquiry notice, which neither section mentions.

RSA 508:2, Real Actions

No action for the recovery of real estate may be brought after twenty years from the time the right to recover first accrued to the party claiming it or to some person under whom they claim. But where the action rests on rights based on a possibility of reverter, a right of re-entry, or an executory interest, the period is five years from the time the right to recover possession or the right of re-entry first accrued. The second limb was added in 2008 and is the shortest limitation on this record for getting land back. The conveyancing chapter contains a companion provision limiting possibilities of reverter, rights of re-entry and executory interests, which applies to legal future interests created by deed, will or power of appointment and not to beneficial interests created by or through trusts.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at RSA 508:2 on 2026-08-03, subsection II added by 2008 c. 228, with the companion at RSA 477:3-b. The five year limb is worth a mineral owner's attention for a reason that is not obvious. Conveyances of minerals are sometimes drafted as determinable interests, where the mineral estate reverts on some condition, and where an interest of that kind exists in New Hampshire the holder of the reverter has five years from accrual rather than twenty. Nothing read says this reaches minerals, and no New Hampshire decision was fetched, so the page states the shape of the rule and stops. THE ORDINARY QUESTION IS ALSO UNANSWERED HERE and the page says so: nothing read addresses a severed interest of any kind, RSA 508:2 sets a period without stating what possession must look like, and the general proposition that possession of the surface is not possession of what is underneath once they are split has not been verified against any New Hampshire authority. Compare Idaho, which lists enclosure and cultivation, requires all taxes paid and clear and convincing evidence, and lets a landowner switch the doctrine off by recording a declaration; Maine, which says a mistaken belief about the boundary does not defeat the claim; and Oregon, which requires an honest belief of ownership. New Hampshire legislates the clock and nothing else.