Abandoned LAMCO Mine

30 years ago the Swedish mining company,LAMCO, was mining some of the richest iron ore in the world (70% pure iron ) in the mountains right behind the ABC campus. Sadly, the massive mining operation -- one of the largest concessions in the world was abandoned practically overnight.  We visited the abandoned mine today. Mammoth mining equipment sitting like rusty, frozen dinosaurs from an era that is gone forever. Yes, there is a new Indian mining company working a nearby mountain, but nowhere near the scale of what the Swedes were doing three decades ago. 

Wapco - huge mining dump trucks that we used to flag down in the middle of the night as teenagers while camping up in the Nimba mountains. The Wapco drivers thought we were nuts, but would wave us aboard with big grins. We would then spend hours riding around with the driver standing on the front ledge of the Wapco as the driver drove down into the pits to have his truck loaded, and then miles back across the mine to the gargantuan rock crusher where the driver would dump the ore into a seemingly bottomless, roaring machine that would smash the boulders into bits of gravel.

A two-mile long conveyor belt brought the ore down the mountain to these huge Train loading iron ore silos.

Wapco grave yard.

Strip mining crater at the top of Mt.Nimba.

Are you my mother?