Anglo American filed for 509 new lode claims across Arizona's Graham and Greenlee counties in April, enough ground to make it the second-most active staker in the entire United States that month — trailing only a small Oregon gold outfit few outside Baker County have heard of. That is according to ClaimWatch data, Stake & Paper's tracking of federal mining-claim filings with the Bureau of Land Management.
The filing did not come with a press release. It did not need one. Anglo American has spent the past year telling investors, quarter after quarter, that copper is now the whole point of the company — it just hasn't said much about where the next pound is coming from. The BLM paperwork answers part of that question, and it points to a state that already produces roughly two-thirds of America's copper.
The stakes here are not subtle. Copper drove about 70% of Anglo's simplified-portfolio earnings in the first half of 2026, according to an earnings-call transcript reported by Investing.com, as the company sheds diamonds, coal and platinum and absorbs Teck Resources into what it now calls Anglo Teck. A miner that size does not plant 10,312 acres of claims — a 12.7% share of everything staked in America that month, per ClaimWatch data — for sentimental reasons. It plants them because the ground is getting scarce and the price makes even long-shot exploration pencil out.
And the price has been extraordinary. Comex copper touched a record $6.7140 a pound on August 12, according to Mining.com, while the London Metal Exchange's cash-to-three-month spread blew out to its widest since the 2021 squeeze that forced the exchange into emergency intervention. Sprott Asset Management's Jacob White told Mining.com the rally increasingly looks less like a normal commodity cycle and more like a structural squeeze, as mine shortages collide with demand from power grids, AI data centers and defense contractors. The Copper Miners ETF has priced in the mania: COPX closed at $94.59, up +5.18% on the day and roughly 120% since last August, per market data.
Graham and Greenlee sit in the same district as Freeport-McMoRan's Safford mine, one of the few large-scale copper operations built in Arizona in the past three decades. Graham alone absorbed 376 of the state's new claims in April, filed by a single staker, according to ClaimWatch's county-level data — almost certainly Anglo, given its share of the month's total. Greenlee added another 174. Freeport itself was not idle nearby: the company staked 112 new claims and 2,314 acres in Grant County, New Mexico, even as it walked away from 25 claims in that same county — a reminder that even the incumbents are pruning as fast as they plant.
That churn shows up in the bigger picture too. Total active claims on U.S. public land stood at 579,094 in April, ClaimWatch data shows, after the month added 3,996 new claims against 236 closures for a net gain of 3,760. That is a fraction of September 2025's 12,466 new claims — but September is always the loudest month of the year, driven by the annual assessment-year fee deadline rather than any single company's strategy, and the months since have settled into a steadier, less frantic rhythm of roughly four thousand new claims apiece.
What the data does not show is any sign that Anglo's Arizona push is finished. BLM records this recent run four months behind actual filing dates, so the true scale of what majors staked over the summer — while copper was setting records and Anglo's own earnings call was crowing about 19% returns on capital — will not be visible in the numbers for months yet. Antofagasta already cut its own output forecast this month even as copper prices lifted its earnings, Reuters reported, and BHP has said its copper pivot is paying off, according to the Financial Times. The majors are converging on the same conclusion from different starting points: there is more money to be made mining copper than almost anything else on the periodic table, and not enough of it left in the ground that's already spoken for.
Anglo's claims are unpatented. They carry no guarantee of a mine, a permit, or a single ounce of metal. What they guarantee is a seat at the table if Arizona's copper corridor turns into the next fight over American supply — and in a market this tight, a seat at the table is worth staking a claim for.
