Since 1991, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and United Mining Corp. (UMC) were in dispute about a unique and valuable deposit of building stone boulders and decorative stone near Shoshone, Idaho. At issue was whether the stone was a locatable mineral under the General Mining Law of 1872, or whether it could only be mined by a discretionary mineral materials sale.

UMC submitted a materials sale application in 1991. UMC also placed 14 placer mining claims on the same deposit. BLM followed with an attempt to withdraw the land from mineral entry and rejected the company's materials sale application. UMC then served a Notice of Intent to mine on the claims, which precipitated a validity hearing by BLM before an Administrative Law Judge.

UMC argued that the boulders were locatable under the 1872 General Mining Law. The BLM argued that the stone boulders were locatable under the 1892 Building Stone Act, but that the claims were invalid because "the value of the land for aesthetic, scientific and recreational purposes outweighed its value for mining." Consequently, the claims failed to meet the Building Stone Act's standard that they must be "chiefly valuable" for building stone alone. The judge agreed with the bureau and declared UMC's claims void.

On appeal, the Interior Board of Land Appeals, by a narrow margin of 6-4, vacated the judge's decision that a comparative value test is applicable under the General Mining Law. The board emphasized that "if discovery of a valuable mineral deposit is shown, a valid claim exists regardless of a more beneficial use to which the land might be put." The board also pointed out that the Building Stone Act's chiefly valuable standard is limited to a comparison of the land's mineral value versus its agricultural value.

Because an IBLA decision is a final departmental action, BLM cannot appeal the decision.