Vermont mineral rights

29 V.S.A. § 563, Abandonment of oil and gas interests; preservation

An abandoned interest in oil and gas reverts to and merges with the surface estate from which it was severed. An interest is deemed abandoned at any time that it has been unused for a continuous period of ten years after 1 July 1973 AND no statement of interest has been filed at any time within the preceding five years. So there are two conditions and both must be met: ten years of non use is not enough on its own if a statement was filed in the last five, and a statement filed six years ago does not help an interest that has been idle for a decade. Five things count as use: actual production of oil or gas, including from lands covered by a lease the interest is subject to or from lands pooled or unitized with them; oil and gas operations conducted under the terms of the instrument that created the interest; payment of rental or royalties to delay or continue the use; payment of taxes on the oil and gas interest; and the existence of a currently valid Act 250 permit or drilling permit for development of the interest. The owner who ORIGINALLY SEVERED the mineral estate from the surface is outside the section entirely, and stays outside it even though the surface and other interests have since been sold, leased or mortgaged away. The section applies to all interests in oil and gas, and to interests in other minerals only where those were created inclusively in the same instrument that expressly creates an oil and gas interest; it does not reach a mineral interest that does not expressly include oil and gas or that was intended to be separate from one. The surface owner gives notice of abandonment by publishing it in a newspaper of general circulation in the town where the land lies, and mailing a copy by certified or registered mail within ten days of publication if the owner's address is shown on record. Filing the notice with an affidavit in the land records then makes the interest presumed abandoned unless a court finds to the contrary.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 29 V.S.A. § 563 on 2026-08-03. Added by 2023, No. 161 (Adj. Sess.), § 36, effective 6 June 2024, which makes it THE NEWEST DORMANT MINERAL STATUTE ON THIS RECORD by more than a decade, and it was enacted into a chapter whose every subchapter had been repealed the previous year. Four features separate it from the fourteen other lapse regimes here. FIRST, the preservation filing is not a one-off. Nearly every notice-to-preserve on this record is filed once and either lasts for a fixed long period or restarts a clock; Vermont's condition is that a statement of interest has been filed WITHIN THE PRECEDING FIVE YEARS, which on its face makes preservation a recurring five-year duty rather than a single act. Set that against the same state's marketable record title act, where a notice of claim lasts forty years from filing, and Vermont is a state that asks a mineral owner to file twice on two entirely different cycles. SECOND, the destination is a merger: the interest reverts to AND MERGES WITH the surface estate, which is Wisconsin's language rather than Michigan's vesting or Minnesota's forfeiture to the State. THIRD, the exemption in subsection (c) for the owner who originally severed the estate has no analogue found here, and it inverts the usual assumption that the oldest severances are the most exposed: in Vermont the original severor's own interest is safe forever and it is the assignees and heirs who are on the clock. FOURTH, the scope rule in subsection (d) is the narrowest of the substance-limited acts on this record and it is limited by INSTRUMENT rather than by substance. Michigan's 1963 act reaches oil and gas; Iowa's reaches coal; Vermont's reaches oil and gas and then reaches other minerals only where they were carved out in the same instrument that expressly created the oil and gas interest, so whether a Vermont hard-rock interest is exposed depends on what else the deed that created it happened to say. A DRAFTING DEFECT IS RECORDED HERE AND NOT RESOLVED. Subsection (b)(2) requires a statement of interest 'under subsection (e) of this section'. Subsection (e) is the list of what counts as use. The statement of interest is created by subsection (f). The cross-reference does not match the section it points at, this record makes no claim about what a Vermont court would do with that, and it is stated because a mineral owner relying on the section should know it is there. WHAT IS NOT READ: nothing read gives the owner of a published-against interest any period in which to answer the notice, and no such window should be inferred from the absence; no Vermont decision on this section was fetched, and there may not yet be one; and the effect of the merger on a lease of the interest was not established.

27 V.S.A. § 601, Marketable record title: requirements

Any person holding an unbroken chain of title of record to any interest in real estate for forty years is deemed at the end of that period to have a marketable record title to the interest. That title is held, and taken by successors, free and clear of any and all interests, liens, claims and charges whose existence depends in whole or in part on any act, transaction, event or omission occurring before the forty year period, whether or not the instrument purporting to create the interest was properly executed, and all such interests are declared void and of no effect at law or in equity. The escape is a notice in writing, verified by oath, filed for record within the forty year period, containing a full and accurate description of the land in particular terms, recorded at length where a deed of the land is recorded, and indexed under the claimant's name as grantee and the current record owner's name as grantor. A notice so filed stays effective for forty years from the date of filing. No absence, incapacity, disability or lack of knowledge of any kind suspends the running of the period. Eight kinds of interest survive without any notice: a lessor's reversion and a lessee's rights; a mortgagee's interest until the secured obligation falls due; a mortgagee's interest where the instrument states no due date; an interest held by adverse possession not evidenced by a recorded instrument; a remainder, reverter, reversionary interest or interest arising on a condition, except one about the distance between a structure and a highway or municipal property; an easement whose existence is clearly observable by physical evidence of its use; an easement granted, excepted or reserved by a recorded instrument; and conservation or preservation rights created under the two conservation chapters of Title 10. There is no mineral exception. Separately, the act does not affect real estate owned or held by the United States, the State of Vermont or any political subdivision, and those three are excluded from the definition of person.

Checked August 3, 2026. All six sections of the subchapter, 27 V.S.A. §§ 601 to 606, were fetched and READ IN FULL on 2026-08-03, not enumerated and not searched. That matters, because this is a negative about what a statute does not say, and the whole subchapter is short enough to read end to end. Across all six sections the words mineral, minerals, oil, gas, petroleum, mine, mining and quarry appear NOT ONCE. The eight exceptions in § 604(a) were then read one at a time and set against a severed mineral interest, because the fifth of them is the one that could be mistaken for a rescue: it saves a remainder, a reverter, a reversionary interest or an interest arising upon a condition, and a severed mineral fee is none of those. It is a present interest in real estate, which is the thing the act is aimed at. VERMONT IS THEREFORE THE SECOND STATE ON THIS RECORD WHOSE MARKETABLE RECORD TITLE ACT REACHES SEVERED MINERALS BY SAYING NOTHING ABOUT THEM. Florida was the first found and its chapter 712 likewise contains zero occurrences of mineral. Read all four together and the instrument turns out to be the same and the results are four different: Oklahoma and Utah except severed minerals in terms, North Carolina's chapter 47B uses the word mineral exactly once and it is in an exception, and Florida and Vermont never use it at all. One line of text is the whole difference. Two Vermont-specific points a Florida reader should not carry across. The period is FORTY years rather than thirty, and a notice of claim lasts forty years from filing rather than needing to be refiled every thirty. And § 602(b) is almost word for word Florida's s. 712.05 on knowledge: no absence, incapacity, disability or lack of knowledge OF ANY KIND suspends the clock, so an heir who never knew the interest existed is in exactly the same position as one who did. WHAT IS NOT READ AND IT IS THE MAIN LIMIT: no Vermont decision on this subchapter was fetched, so whether a Vermont court has ever applied the act to a severed mineral interest is unknown here. Nothing was read on how the act interacts with 29 V.S.A. § 563, which is a second and much newer route to the same destination with a different clock, a different filing and a different scope, and the two statutes do not mention each other.

27 V.S.A. § 308, Mines and quarries

The grantee of a mine, quarry, or of the right of mining and quarrying, in severance from the ownership of the soil, must within thirty days after its execution cause the deed, lease or other instrument to be recorded in a book kept for that purpose in the office where by law a deed of the real estate is required to be recorded. A grantee who fails to do it forfeits fifty dollars to the town, or to the county if the mine, quarry or right is in an unorganized town or gore, recoverable in an action on the statute. Three things follow from the wording. Vermont recognises the severed mineral interest by name and describes it in the old form, as a grant in severance from the ownership of the soil rather than as a mineral estate. The recording of it is not merely permitted but required, on a deadline, which the general recording act does not do for anything else. And the record of it is kept separately from the ordinary land records, in a book kept for that purpose in the same office.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 27 V.S.A. § 308 on 2026-08-03, in the subchapter headed Manner of Conveying Interests in or Affecting Realty. This is the provision that answers, for Vermont, the first question this site asks of every state, and its shape is unusual in three ways worth separating. FIRST, IT IS A DUTY WITH A DEADLINE. Every other recording provision read for this record is permissive in form: record and you are protected, do not and you are exposed. This one says the grantee SHALL record, within thirty days, and attaches a penalty payable to the town rather than a loss of priority. A Vermont grantee who records on day forty has a perfectly good record title and owes fifty dollars. SECOND, A SEPARATE BOOK. Minnesota is the only other state on this record where a severed mineral interest goes somewhere different from an ordinary deed, and there the split is between the county recorder for abstract land and the registrar of titles for Torrens land, which is a split about the LAND. Vermont's is a split about the INTEREST: the same office, a different book, because of what was conveyed. Whether Vermont town clerks in fact maintain a separate mines and quarries book today was NOT established, and a searcher should ask rather than assume; the statute is what was read. THIRD, THE COMPANION IN THE TAX CODE. 32 V.S.A. § 3604 provides that the interest of a grantee in severance from surface ownership in mines, quarries or the right of mining and quarrying SHALL BE SET IN THE LIST AS REAL ESTATE, using the same phrase, so the severed interest is separately assessed in its own right on the town grand list. Vermont is a fourth answer here on how property tax meets a severed interest: Alabama takes it off the roll for good in exchange for a few cents an acre, Minnesota bills it every year at forty cents an acre minimum, Iowa assesses it at not less than five cents an acre, and Vermont simply sets it in the list as real estate at no stated rate or minimum. That matters in Vermont more than it would elsewhere, because 29 V.S.A. § 563(e)(4) makes payment of taxes on an oil and gas interest one of the five things that count as USE and so save it from abandonment. WHAT IS NOT READ: how such an interest is valued for the grand list, whether the fifty dollar forfeiture is ever pursued, and whether any Vermont decision construes § 308.

29 V.S.A. § 302, Right of discoverer to work claim

All mines or quarries discovered upon any public land belonging to the people of the State, or upon land beneath public waters, are the property of the people of this State in their right of sovereignty. A citizen of the United States who discovers a valuable mine or quarry on such land and files a notice of discovery and a bond may work it, and that person and their heirs and assigns have the sole benefit of all the product, on payment into the State Treasury of two percent of the market value of all such products as a royalty, valued when the products are first in a marketable form. The Legislature may from time to time provide for a different rate. A statement of the amount sold or removed and of all trees cut or destroyed must be made semiannually under oath to the State Treasurer, and the royalty paid semiannually on the basis of it; a wilful falsehood in that statement forfeits to the State the value of the whole amount mined or quarried during the period the statement covers. No entry, breaking up of the land, working of a mine or quarry or removal of minerals is permitted without the prior written consent of the Commissioner of Buildings and General Services, who may also give written permission to erect buildings. Timber may not be cut except what is actually necessary to uncover the mine or make a road to it, and what is cut is paid for at a value the Commissioner of Forests, Parks and Recreation declares, never less than five dollars per thousand for merchantable timber. Failure to pay when due, or to file a required bond, terminates the claimant's rights and those of everyone holding under them. The chapter does not apply to State forests and parks, and it does not affect grants made by the Legislature before 28 January 1911.

Checked August 3, 2026. All eight sections of 29 V.S.A. ch. 9 were fetched and read on 2026-08-03. This is a second nineteenth and early twentieth century prospector's regime on this record and it is worth reading directly against the first. Missouri's chapter 444 hands a stranger three exclusive years and a right of way on land in private hands, at a royalty set by what the neighbours pay. Vermont's reaches only PUBLIC land and land beneath public waters, and it fixes the royalty in the statute at two percent of market value, valued when the product is first in a marketable form, with the Legislature reserving the right to change it. So the two states answer the same question at opposite ends: Missouri delegates the rate to local custom and Vermont writes it down. TWO PROVISIONS DO REAL WORK AND ARE EASY TO SKIM PAST. The forfeiture in § 303 is not of the underpaid royalty but of the value of the WHOLE amount mined or quarried during the period a false statement covers, which is a penalty of a different order from an interest charge. And § 304 makes the whole permission conditional on the prior written consent of the Commissioner of Buildings and General Services, so § 302's grant to a discoverer is not self-executing: filing a notice and a bond does not by itself entitle anybody to break ground. Note also that the discoverer must be a CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES, which is a condition no other extraction provision read for this record imposes. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any notice of discovery has ever been filed, whether the Commissioner has published any procedure for consenting, how much public land in Vermont this could reach given the § 308 exclusion of State forests and parks, and whether the two percent has in fact ever been changed by the Legislature since 1911. The chapter is on the books; nothing read establishes that it is used.

10 V.S.A. § 6001, Act 250 definitions

Vermont has no mining permit chapter. What a commercial extraction project needs is an Act 250 land use permit, and whether it needs one turns on a test that has nothing to do with minerals. Development means, among other things, the construction of improvements on a tract or tracts of land owned or controlled by a person involving more than TEN acres within a five mile radius, for commercial or industrial purposes, in a municipality that has adopted permanent zoning and subdivision bylaws; or more than ONE acre on the same terms in a municipality that has not; or more than one acre in a municipality with bylaws that has elected by ordinance to have the one acre threshold apply. So the same quarry can be inside or outside Act 250 depending on the bylaws of the town it sits in. Two extraction activities are named as development in their own right regardless of acreage: the drilling of an oil and gas well, and exploration for fissionable source materials beyond the reconnaissance phase, or the extraction or processing of fissionable source material. Reconnaissance is defined, and the definition is the line between free and permitted: appraising a region from published literature, aerial photography and geologic maps; geophysical, geochemical and remote sensing techniques that do not involve road building, land clearing, explosives or introducing chemicals; surface geologic, topographic or other mapping and property surveying; and sample collections that do not involve excavation or drilling equipment, explosives or chemicals.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 10 V.S.A. §§ 6001 and 6081 on 2026-08-03. The finding here is structural and it is the opposite of New Hampshire's, read the same week, which is worth stating because the two states are adjacent and their rock is the same. New Hampshire has a chapter called Local Regulation of Excavations that is ABOUT extraction, defines the material, and hands the permit to a town planning board. Vermont has no chapter about extraction at all, and instead runs quarrying through a general land use statute whose jurisdictional test is acreage and commercial purpose. Two consequences follow for a Vermont landowner and neither is obvious from the statute's own words. Whether the quarry next door needed a permit depends on whether that town adopted permanent zoning and subdivision bylaws, so the answer to a question about Vermont mineral law is a question about municipal law. And a project small enough to stay under the threshold is not regulated by this chapter at all. THE FISSIONABLE SOURCE MATERIAL PROVISIONS ARE UNUSUAL ENOUGH TO NAME. Vermont is the only state on this record whose land use statute defines reconnaissance, and it defines it in order to say precisely where a uranium or thorium prospector stops being free to look: reading maps, remote sensing and taking samples without excavation, explosives or chemicals are outside the permit, and anything beyond that is inside it. WHAT IS NOT READ, and it is the main gap on this topic: 10 V.S.A. § 6086, which sets out the ten criteria a district commission must find satisfied before issuing a permit, was NOT fetched. So this page says what triggers Act 250 and does not say what Act 250 then requires, and no negative about surface owner protection in Vermont should be inferred from that silence. Also not read: § 6085 on party status, so whether and how a neighbour participates is not established here; § 6084 on notice; and the whole of the appeals route.

10 V.S.A. § 6081, Permits required; exemptions

Vermont defines a slate quarry as a quarry pit or hole from which slate has been extracted or removed for the purpose of commercial production of building material, roofing, tile or other dimensional stone products, and defines dimensional stone as slate processed into regularly shaped blocks according to specifications. Pits from which slate is extracted primarily for crushed stone products are outside the definition unless slate had been extracted from them primarily for dimensional purposes as of 1 June 1970. For slate removed from a site before 1 June 1970 and included in final slate quarry registration documents, the site, if lying unused at any time after those operations commenced, is deemed to be held in reserve and is not deemed to be abandoned. The registration window has closed: by no later than 1 January 1997, an owner of land or of MINERAL RIGHTS, or an owner of slate quarry leasehold rights, on a parcel where a slate quarry was located as of 1 June 1970, could register the quarry with the district commission and with the clerk of the municipality, with a map of the parcel boundaries. The registration had to state the name and address of the owner of the land, mineral rights or leasehold rights, whether that person held mineral rights or leasehold rights or owned in fee simple, the physical location, the location and size of ancillary buildings, and the book and page of the recorded instrument by which the owner holds title. The registration went to the district commission with a request for a final jurisdictional determination, and that determination is recorded in the municipal land records at the registrant's expense with a site plan. On a registered parcel, ancillary activities related to extracting and processing slate into products other than crushed stone are not substantial changes so long as they do not create a new slate quarry hole unrelated to an existing one. Ancillary activities are listed: drilling, crushing, grinding, sizing, washing, drying, sawing and cutting stone; blasting, trimming, punching, splitting and gauging; and the use of buildings and the use and construction of equipment exclusively for those activities, with buildings existing on 1 April 1995 and their replacements treated as ancillary.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 10 V.S.A. § 6081(j) to (l) with the definitions at § 6001(25) on 2026-08-03. THIS IS THE ONLY PROVISION ON THIS RECORD THAT LEGISLATES NON USE IN THE OWNER'S FAVOUR, and it is in the same state as 29 V.S.A. § 563, which abandons an oil and gas interest for ten years of non use. Vermont says in terms that an idle slate quarry is held in reserve and says in terms that an idle oil and gas interest is abandoned. The two provisions do different legal work, and the page is careful about that: § 563 is about TITLE and takes the interest away, while § 6081(j) is about PERMIT JURISDICTION and preserves a pre-Act 250 exemption. But the choice of the word abandoned in both, in the same state's statutes, is the sharpest illustration this record has of a legislature deciding that non use means opposite things depending on what is being left idle. Set it beside New Hampshire, read the same week, which defines dimension stone in order to put it OUTSIDE its excavation permit regime and its two cent per cubic yard tax. Two adjacent states, the same rock, opposite drafting: New Hampshire's granite is excluded from the regime by definition, and Vermont's slate is brought into the definitions in order to be given a permanent exemption from a permit. THE WINDOW IS CLOSED and that is the second thing to notice. Registration had to be done by 1 January 1997. This record now carries two states with closed statutory windows, and they cut opposite ways: North Carolina's windows, the last of which shut on 1 January 1988, were the last chance to SAVE a mineral interest, and missing one lost it. Vermont's was the last chance to register an EXEMPTION, and missing it means the quarry is subject to Act 250 like anything else rather than that anybody lost title to anything. WHAT IS NOT READ: whether any list of registered slate quarries is published anywhere, how many were registered, and § 6007(c), the jurisdictional determination provision the registration runs through. No Vermont decision on these subsections was fetched.

29 V.S.A. § 571, Hydraulic fracturing; prohibition

No person may engage in hydraulic fracturing in the State, and no person within the State may collect, store or treat wastewater from hydraulic fracturing. The prohibition was added in 2012 and has no permit exception and no moratorium language. Separately, and eleven years later, the whole of Vermont's oil and gas conservation code was repealed: 29 V.S.A. chapter 14 had six subchapters, headed General Provisions, Administration, Conservation of Oil and Gas, State Oil and Gas Leases, Permits Reports and Notices, and Violations Enforcement and Penalties, and every section in all six was repealed on 8 June 2023. The earlier chapter 13, Natural Gas and Oil Resources, was repealed in 1982. What remains in chapter 14 is three sections, and two of them were put back in 2024: a requirement that a lessee file a release of an expired, cancelled, surrendered or relinquished oil and gas lease within thirty days of a written request, on pain of all damages occasioned including costs and reasonable attorney's fees; the abandonment section dealt with elsewhere on this page; and the fracking prohibition.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 29 V.S.A. §§ 571 and 561 and the chapter 14 table of contents on 2026-08-03. The prohibition was added by 2011, No. 152 (Adj. Sess.), § 3, effective 16 May 2012, and amended by 2023, No. 53, § 135. THIS IS THE THIRD OUTRIGHT STATUTORY BAN ON THIS RECORD AND THE EARLIEST OF THE THREE: Vermont 2012, Maryland 2017, Washington 2019, with New York achieving a similar result by a different instrument, a refusal of permits for high volume hydraulic fracturing rather than a prohibition on the activity. Vermont's is also the only one of the three that reaches the WASTEWATER as well as the technique, so a Vermont facility may not take fracking wastewater produced in another state. TWO DATES TELL THE STORY AND THEY SHOULD BE READ TOGETHER. Vermont prohibited the technique in 2012, dismantled the entire conservation, leasing, permitting and enforcement apparatus for oil and gas in 2023, and then in 2024 enacted a statute that abandons an unused oil and gas interest to the surface owner and another that forces a lessee to release a dead lease. A legislature that has closed the industry down is still legislating about the title to its interests, and the 2024 additions are the tidying up of an ownership record for an industry that will not return. That reading is this record's, drawn from the dates and the section headings, and no legislative history was fetched. WHAT IS NOT READ, AND IT IS A REAL LIMIT: the TEXT of the repealed subchapters. Only the six subchapter headings were read, so what Vermont's conservation code actually contained before 2023, including whether it had compulsory pooling, spacing units, correlative rights or a royalty floor, is not known to this record. Nothing on this page should be read as establishing what Vermont gave up. Also not read: whether any well was ever drilled in Vermont, and whether any Natural Gas and Oil Resources Board still exists.

27 V.S.A. § 342, Acknowledgment and recording required

A deed of bargain and sale, a mortgage or other conveyance of land in fee simple or for term of life, or a lease for more than one year from its making, is not effectual to hold the lands against any person but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, unless the deed or other conveyance is acknowledged and recorded. Deeds and other conveyances of lands, or of an estate or interest in land, must be signed by the grantor, acknowledged before a notary public, and recorded at length in the clerk's office of the TOWN in which the lands lie. A deed referring to a survey prepared or revised after 1 July 1988 may be recorded only if the survey accompanies it or the deed cites where the survey is already recorded, and a conveyance that subdivides a parcel or changes its boundaries after 1 January 2020 must be accompanied by or cite a recorded survey plat; failing that does not void the deed or make the title unmarketable, which is stated in the section. A lease of more than one year need not be recorded at length if a notice or memorandum of lease carrying nine listed particulars is recorded instead. A deed not acknowledged may be recorded while proceedings to prove its execution are pending, and is as effectual as an acknowledged one for sixty days, continuing until six business days after those proceedings end.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 27 V.S.A. §§ 342, 341 and 378 on 2026-08-03. Two things about this rule are worth a searcher's attention and neither is the rule itself. FIRST, THE OFFICE IS THE TOWN. Vermont has counties and they appear in the statutes, but § 341 requires recording in the clerk's office of the TOWN in which the lands lie, and a Vermont title search is therefore conducted town by town in the office of a town clerk. That is a fourth distinct answer on this record to the question of which office holds the land records, after the ordinary county recorder, Alaska's state Department of Natural Resources recording districts, and Minnesota's split between a county recorder and a registrar of titles. A severed Vermont mine or quarry is recorded in the same town office but, under § 308, in a separate book kept for that purpose. SECOND, THE FORMULATION IS NEW HAMPSHIRE'S RATHER THAN THE COMMON ONE. Most states on this record void an unrecorded conveyance as against a later good faith purchaser who records first, which asks what the later purchaser knew. Vermont's § 342, like New Hampshire's RSA 477:7, says instead that an unrecorded conveyance is not effectual to hold the land against ANY PERSON but the grantor and the grantor's heirs, which on its face asks nothing about knowledge at all. New Hampshire has a second section, RSA 477:3-a, pointing the other way, and its page refuses to reconcile the two. Nothing equivalent to RSA 477:3-a was found in Vermont's chapter, so the two neighbours reach the same words from different directions. THIS RECORD APPLIES NO LABEL OF NOTICE, RACE OR RACE NOTICE TO VERMONT, because doing so would need Vermont decisions and none was fetched. The practical instruction does not depend on the label: acknowledge, and record, in the town where the land lies. WHAT IS NOT READ: any Vermont decision on § 342; whether possession gives inquiry notice, which the sections do not mention; and whether town clerks in fact maintain the § 308 mines and quarries book.

12 V.S.A. § 501, Recovery of lands

An action for the recovery of lands, or of the possession of them, may not be maintained unless commenced within fifteen years after the cause of action first accrues to the plaintiff or to those under whom the plaintiff claims, except as otherwise provided in the tax sale provisions of Title 32. A person having a right or title of entry into houses or lands may not enter after fifteen years from the time the right of entry accrues. Nothing in either section states what possession must consist of, and neither mentions minerals, a severed interest or a mineral estate.

Checked August 3, 2026. Read at 12 V.S.A. §§ 501 and 502 on 2026-08-03. Fifteen years is at the short end of this record: New Hampshire and Maryland run twenty, Idaho and Oregon ten with conditions, Maine twenty. What Vermont does NOT do is legislate the content of possession, and that is the same silence New Hampshire's RSA 508:2 keeps. Compare the states that do fill it in: Idaho lists enclosure and cultivation, requires every tax paid and clear and convincing evidence, and lets a landowner switch the doctrine off entirely by recording a declaration; Maine provides that a mistaken belief about the boundary does not defeat the claim; Oregon requires an honest belief of ownership with an objective basis. Vermont legislates the clock and leaves the rest to its courts. THE ORDINARY QUESTION IS UNANSWERED FOR VERMONT AND THE PAGE SAYS SO: whether possession of the surface can ever ripen into ownership of a severed mineral interest is not addressed by anything read, and the general proposition that it cannot, once the estates are split, has not been verified against any Vermont authority. No Vermont decision was fetched. The exception in § 501 points at 32 V.S.A. § 5263, in the tax sale provisions, which was not read.