Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine

Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine is the California mine that anchors Battlefield rare earths: How the U.S. lost to China. The episode says prospectors discovered the deposit in 1949 while searching for uranium in the mountains between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, near the California-Nevada border.

The mine became important because its rare-earth deposit supported Molycorp’s rise. The source says Mountain Pass supplied rare earths including europium, lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and praseodymium, and that europium from the site helped produce the red color in color televisions.

In the episode, Mountain Pass is also a symbol of lost and partially rebuilt U.S. capacity. Molycorp shut it down, reopened it through Project Phoenix, and failed after prices collapsed. The mine was later sold to MP Materials, which the source says sent ore to China for refining until 2025 and then moved toward U.S. refining after the [[USDepartmentOfDefense|Department of Defense]] took a 15 percent stake.

Connections

• Molycorp, Project Phoenix, and MP Materials - successive company and project contexts.
• California and the California-Nevada border - source geography.
• Rare Earth Processing Bottleneck - why the mine alone does not solve supply-chain dependence.
• State-Backed Rare Earth Rebuilding - policy frame around its latest revival.