There’s a long history of hard rock mining in Southern Colorado. Now the federal government is updating the region’s geological maps to expand the search for critical minerals and rare earth elements.

Buried within the rocks of Mountain Pass are rare-earth elements—a group of metals that play a vital role in nearly every twenty-first-century technology. They help make the high-strength magnets that ...

The comments come shortly after the U.S. and Australia signed a deal designed to boost the supplies of rare earths and other critical minerals. George Cheveley, natural resources portfolio manager at ...