I think the United States has an incredible supply of minerals. Much of them can’t be mined because they are national parks or special environmental set-asides. Instead, we get our minerals from poor third world countries by strip mining and leaving behind a blasted landscape with no life.
RARE EARTH ELEMENT PROSPECTS AND OCCURRENCES IN UTAH
"The Calf Canyon deposit is about 6 mi due south of Escalante and the Dave Canyon deposit adjoins it to the south. Crudely estimated average grades from surface rock chip samples for these deposits run from about 7 to 15.8% ZrO2 and 11.85 to 20.9% TiO2 (Doelling, 1975; Gloyn and others, 1997). A bulk sample of this deposit had grades of 12.4% ZrO2, 18.8% TiO2, and 14.7% Fe (Dow and Batty, 1961). Two channel samples of the deposit by Doelling (1975) ran 0.09 and 0.15% Th equivalent. Gloyn and others (1997) suggest the Calf Canyon deposit may host over 300,000 short tons of Ti-Zr ore. No REE values are available for the Straight Cliffs TiZr deposits and they all lie within the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument."