Concern regarding rare earth metal mining within the vast reaches of San Bernardino County’s outback is reviving.
That concern is vectored from two perspectives that are nearly at polar opposites of the political spectrum. Some have misgivings that the intensive disturbance of the soil, to include pit mining and hydraulicking involving vast amounts of water in an arid environment will ultimately redound in an ecological disaster. Others find it more disturbing that restrictions growing out of that environmental advocacy which are being imposed by both local and state government at present on what they consider to be an activity that has tremendous strategic importance for the Unitied States both economically and militarily are giving foreigners the upper hand in terms of access to a vital resource.
Rare earth metals, also referred to as lanthanides, are a set of 17 minerals – specifically scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, gadolinium, europium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, lutetium and ytterbium.
Prior to the late 19th Century, rare earth elements did not have a crucial or indispensable role in important applications. Rare earth metals first achieved significant industrial and consumer relevance in the 1890s when chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach utilized cerium and thorium to create the Welsbach gas mantle, which allowed for very bright gas-burning street lights. Welsbach thereafter developed “mischmetal,” an alloy of rare earths, which was widely used as flints in pocket cigarette lighters. The advent of color television in the 1950s and its refinement in the 1960s created unprecedented and enduring demand for europium, which creates a bright red illumination within television screens.
San Bernardino County was at the absolute forefront of lanthanide production as a consequence of the Mountain Pass Mine, located within the northeasternmost extension of the county, some 14 miles from Nevada border.
Incidental to the extraction of europium from Mountain Pass was the derivation of multiple other rare earth elements, just as technical advancement in a number of fields throughout the 20th Century led to the identification of uses for them. Rare earths at present serve as niche ingredients in the components of high-tech devices, including mercury-vapor lamps, high-temperature superconductors, lasers, microwave filters, high refractive index glass, electrical vehicles, flint products, battery-electrodes, camera lenses, carbon arc lighting, didymium glass used in welding goggles, ceramic capacitors, nuclear batteries, specialized magnets, semi-conductors, red and blue phosphors, modern x-ray machines, infrared lasers and computer chips.
The Mountain Pass Mine, owned and operated by the Molybdenum Corporation, known as Molycorp, was in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s the world’s most productive rare earth element mine.
In 1996, a pipeline that conveyed wastewater containing heavy metals and radioactive particles from the mining operation to evaporation ponds at Ivanpah Dry Lake ruptured, releasing on seven occasions between July 24 and August 3 of that year thorium and radium-contaminated water into floor of the desert within the Mojave National Preserve and its surroundings.
The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office, then headed by District Attorney Dennis Stout, assigned its environmental crimes division to look into the situation. Over the next several years, while then-Deputy District Attorney Charles Umeda explored initiating both civil action against the corporation, which at that point been bought out by Unocal and would eventually become a division of Chevron, and criminal cases against some of its corporate officers and employees, a decision to close the mine was made in 2002, against a backdrop of environmental restrictions, increasing operational costs and lower prices for rare earth minerals.
The U.S. at that point lost its lead in rare earth production and much of its rare earth processing capacity. Within a very narrow temporal window, China became the world’s leading source of rare earths. At present, that country has a stranglehold on the mining and production of the critical elements, producing upwards of 85 percent of the world’s lanthanides.
Efforts to revive the Mountain Pass Mine have been ongoing for some time, beginning with Chevron selling the mine to privately-held Greenwood Village, Colorado-based Molycorp Minerals LLC., which reopened it in 2012, for more than two years tapping into Mountain Pass’s rich deposits. Seeing that the United States was once again on an arc toward rare earth independence, Chinese companies, subsidized by the Communist Chinese government, increased the output of their mines and created a glut of rare earths on the world market, driving prices downward. By 2015, Molycorp was unable to sell its product at a price that matched or exceeded its production costs nor defray the interest let alone the principal on the debt it had taken on in the modernization of the mine and purchasing its accompanying processing equipment. Molycorp declared bankruptcy, and in July 2017, the mine and its equipment were acquired by a Chinese-led consortium.
The mine remained shuttered as the Chinese solidified their dominance of the worldwide rare earth production industry. Despite the consideration that the Mountain Pass Mine during this time was not producing a profit, in moves that were motivated, perhaps, as much or more by patriotic sentiment than mercenary intent, Chicago based JHL Capital Group and New York City-based QVT Financial and its chief executive officer, James Litinsky, in late 2017 became involved in the holding company controlling the mine property, which was redubbed MP Materials. By 2021, QVT, JHL and Litinsky emerged as the three primary shareholders in MP Materials, such that the primary Chinese shareholder in the mine, Shenghe Resources, had its interest in the enterprise reduced to 7.7 percent.
Simultaneously, Gina Rinehart, the only child of Australian mining magnate Lang Hancock, the executive chairman of Hancock Prospecting and in 2026 Australia’s richest person, purchased an 8.4 percent interest in the Mountain Pass rare earths mine, making her the single largest non-governmental or non-institutional shareholder in that enterprise.
In recent years, the Mountain Pass Mine has ramped up production, and is currently responsible for roughly 11 percent of the rare earth minerals being produced globally.
On April 4, 2025, China imposed export controls on scandium, yttrium, samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium and lutetium, causing significant disruption to global supply chains for industries reliant on those materials. In a reaction to that move, the U.S. Defense Department, since renamed the Department of War, in July 2025 acquired $400 million in MP Materials preferred stock, giving the Pentagon a 15 percent stake in the company. The acquisition was accompanied by an announcement that MP Materials would accelerate the production of rare earth metals and beef up the domestic supply chain, thereby reducing dependence on foreign sources.
MP Materials remains the only U.S. rare earth mining and processing facility. Nevertheless, more than 50 percent of the processed materials it is responsible for are shipped abroad for final refining.
Despite the growing importance of rare earth minerals, American investors, in large measure because of the treacherous regulatory and environmental pitfalls associated with rare earth mining, production and refining, have been reluctant to become involved in such operations.
At present, a group of enterprising individuals are seeking to get in on the ground floor of another rare earth mining operation in San Bernardino County. Of note however, they are not Americans, but like Rinehart, Australians.
The mine was closed down in the 1990s because of environmental concerns. During its hiatus, the Chinese leapt into the breach and became the owners and operators of mines producing in excess of 80 percent of the world’s rare earth elements. In the same timeframe, over the last three decades, with scientific advancements, rare earths became more and more crucial to the economy as modern products increasingly utilized components containing lanthanides.
Music Valley, named for the somewhat unworldly sounds produced by strong desert winds whipping through the area’s rocky canyons, is a remote area straddling portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, located roughly 8 to 12 miles southeast of Twentynine Palms. A historic mining district, it is now recognized that in addition to gold, the area is relatively rich in rare earth minerals.
Dateline Resources Limited is an Australian company engaged in mining and exploration activities in the United States. One of Dateline’s ongoing undertakings is the Colosseum Gold and Rare Earths Project, which is located in San Bernardino County near its boundary with Inyo County, about six miles north of the Mountain Pass Mine, in the Clark Mountain/Walker Lane area and within the Mojave National Preserve.
More recently, Dateline has acquired 57 existing claims encompassing 1,140 acres or 1.78125 square miles and has staked another 969 claims, covering 19,380 acres or 30.28125 square miles in Music Valley.
According to representations made by Dateline to its potential investors, “The Music Valley Heavy Rare Earth Project target area is prospective for heavy rare earth minerals. Early work in the region highlights strong potential for significant rare earth element mineralisation. The project sits within a recognized geological setting for heavy rare earth enrichment based on US Geological Service studies.”
In making that pitch to investors, Dateline emphasized that “The Music Valley Heavy Rare Earth Project… lies near established infrastructure including major highways and power. The region has a mining history and accessible terrain. Rare earth mineralisation in the broader Music Valley area was first identified in 1954 by USGS [United States Geologic Survey geologists. USGS mapping shows the Music Valley area is underlain by Proterozoic to Palaeozoic metasedimentary rocks intruded by granitic and alkaline igneous bodies. These units are overlain locally by tertiary volcanic and sedimentary sequences. Faulting and fracturing are widespread and control fluid movement and mineral deposition. USGS studies describe rare earth mineralisation associated with alkaline intrusive rocks, altered volcanic units, and reworked sedimentary materials. Heavy rare earth elements occur within accessory minerals such as xenotime, monazite, and other rare earth element phosphates.”
According to Dateline, prior to drilling into the bedrock of Music Valley, it is engaged in “initial work programs” with include detailed geological mapping, confirmatory rock chip and soil sampling,, review and integration of historical USGS datasets, and geophysical surveys to define subsurface targets.”
Incipient opposition to Dateline’s designs on Music Valley is forming among Morongo Valley and other Mojave Desert residents. Debate on how to approach the issue is ongoing among them.
There are paradoxical alignments among both supporters of Dateline’s plans and opponents.
One issue is the ecological havoc that would result from pit mining or the use of hydraulicking. Hydraulicking, also called hydraulic mining, involves excavating alluvial or other mineral deposits by directing high-pressure water jets at the material to break it down and transport it for further processing. Hydraulicking can disturb the natural landscape. It can also liberate potentially hazardous materials, such as radioactive deposits, and expose them to the open environment.
On one level, Stout, who is now retired, and Umeda, who is now serving as a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge, are considered potential allies to the Dateline mining proposal, given their track records in closely monitoring and initiating action against aggressive rare earth metal mining with regard to its environmental hazards. On the other hand, both Stout and Umeda are Republicans, and are thus considered to be aligned with the Donald Trump Administration and its willingness to greenlight domestic lanthanide mining efforts.
That paradox compounds itself, however, as the Donald Trump Administration, hold Stout’s and Umeda’s action a generation ago, which ultimately led to the suspension of mining activity in Mountain Pass and thereby allowed China to move into its current overwhelming rare earth mining and refinement leadership position worldwide, in low regard. In the view of those who place a priority upon the United States maintaining all of the strategic advantages it holds or once held, Stout and Umeda exercised poor judgment and a basic lack of loyalty to their country by allowing what they consider to have been a relatively minor environmental issue to derail operations at what was then and yet could be the world’s most productive rare earth mining operation.
There is thus, among the legion of environmentalists gearing up to prevent Dateline from obtaining the mining operation permits it is seeking in Music Valley, debate about whether they should approach Stout and Umeda for their potential assistance, and how, if they decide to do so, to make that approach.
Another paradoxical angle is the Donald Trump Administration’s attitude toward foreign control of American assets on American soil. A potential strategy in preventing Dateline from proceeding with its energetic mining operation in Music Valley would be to convince the Trump Administration to withhold from Dateline the necessary federal permits, including clearance under the National Environmental Protection Act, to proceed with the Music Valley mining operation.