I rode in a little plane from 1967 over the entire iron formation. I’d seen a lot of mining country, but never quite like this.

A version of this story first appeared on Minnesota Public Radio. Hundreds of people stood in a long line that snaked outside the offices of Mesabi Metallics in Nashwauk, Minnesota, last month, ...

NASHWAUK, MINN. – Last week, I gazed up at the largest mining truck in Iron Range history — a 400-ton Komatsu 980E-5. The yellow behemoth occupies some 44,000 cubic feet of space, similar to ...

Underneath a ridge in the southern highlands of Guinea, a west African country of 14m people, lies one of the world’s biggest deposits of iron ore. Mining of the 3bn-tonne deposit, which would be ...