> You can construct a hypothetical where someone gets lucky, and you can construct one where someone has reason to suspect the minerals are there and invests in the land.

You don't even need to construct the scenario where someone with enough capital just buys up as much as possible, knowing they will get lucky with some subset of their property. That's both a modern problem and the plot of Blazing Saddles (yes, I'm choosing that example to focus on how widespread of an issue this has been for centuries).