Mount Nimba LAMCO Mining Site

The ruins of the LAMCO mining site, once the largest iron ore mining operation in the world, sprawl out against the backdrop of a nature reserve at the base of West Africa's tallest mountain. Throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the ore extracted from this site made LAMCO—the Liberian American (Swedish) Minerals Company—Liberia's biggest revenue earner, and Yekepa the third largest town in Liberia. Operations were disrupted in the bloody civil wars of the 1990s and early 2000s. Today, the abandoned equipment is being reclaimed by the forest and harvested for scrap.

The Mt. Nimba massif's rich flora and fauna are the subject of ecological protection efforts, with varying degrees of success in the different countries. The Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is most thoroughly protected in Ivory Coast. The Guinean section is somewhat threatened by adjacent mining activities. The Liberian side, including the mining site, is on UNESCO's "tentative" list, with efforts underway to protect the ecosystem from further mining and poaching activities.

Yekepa, though a relative ghost town compared to its former LAMCO days, is an interesting destination in its own right. Now a company town run by Indian steel company ArcelorMittal, it is home to a mix of expatriates in shiny white container houses living alongside locals in more typical basic huts. Residents of this "drinking town with a mining problem," as one expatriate described it, are happy to welcome the occasional visitor for a chat at the local diner.