Actually the US has two great reservoirs of rare earth ores. One is an active open pit mine in California, and the other one is undeveloped and underneath a man made lake in Texas, but was well surveyed before it was flooded.
Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine, CA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine
Barringer Hill, under Lake Buchanan, TX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barringer_Hill
Rare earth minerals are also obtained as a by product of the mining of anthracite coal.
The downside to this, and why China is dominant in rare earths, is because processing rare earth minerals is *filthy*. Several important ones are chemically similar, which requires very toxic chemicals to separate.
China mines and processes its rare earths in barren deserts so doesn’t give a hoot about pollution.
Side note: some of the places it mines, like the colored hills, are spectacular. Here is an actual picture, the colors are true to life.
Some of the critical rare earths are abundant in certain Appalachian basin coals and their fly ash. There are other coal basins in the US that also have lower levels of REEs in their coals. Extraction from these Appalachian sources may be a way to keep eastern coal mining and coal power generation alive.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2019/3048/fs20193048.pdf
Those colors are severely enhanced. you can tell that by looking at plants and other objects.
That said, even allowing for that, it is pretty spectacular.
