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The concept of abandonment plays an important role in several cases involving tailings or other mine wastes. If the tailings are "abandoned" they become real estate, if they are not abandoned they remain the personal property of the mine or mill which created them. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that title to the mined limestone that had accumulated on the surface of the Tiger, Lynx, and Lion claims vested in Pitkin when the ore from which it was produced was severed from an in-place deposit and processed, 5/ Pitkin abandoned whatever interest it may have had in that limestone when it caused the abandonment of the claims upon which it is found by failing to pay the rental fees required by the DIRAAA, supra, an obligation it had assumed in the 1985 Quarry Operating Agreement. Pitkin has not, since the claims were abandoned, taken any action to protect whatever rights it may have had in the mined material on the abandoned claims. The land upon which it is found was open to location under the mining law to anyone choosing to do so for 4 months after the Tiger, Lynx, and Lion claims were abandoned. On January 27, 1994, the land upon which the. material is found was appropriated under the mining law, but not by Pitkin. MCR is the sole locator of the mining claims that embrace the land upon which the mineral 5/ Ore severed by a lessee under a mining lease, as well as tailings or residue, is the property of the lessee. See e.g. Reeves and Alfers, Dumps and Tailings 23 Rocky MCn.Min.L.Inst. 419, 444-45 (1977). The appellants acknowledge this proposition in their SOR, at 2, where they assert that "Pitkin iron," which was the sub-lessee of the Tiger, Lynx, and Lion claims, "has a quantity of quarried stone on the property, together with substantial piles of fines that were screened from product sold to the power plant and used for rock dust and other uses." 10