In the Piedmont region of North Carolina, about 50 miles east of the Blue Ridge mountains, a thin, 25 mile-long belt of ore stretches north from the southern state line. The strip, called the Carolina Tin-Spodumene Belt, contains the country's largest hard rock deposit of lithium.
Back in the 1950s, lithium gained importance as a component of nuclear bombs and pharmaceuticals, and the area around Kings Mountain, near Charlotte, saw a major boom in mining. For about 30 years, the region supplied almost all the lithium in the world. Then in the 1980s, production moved to lower-cost operations overseas. Today, less than 1 percent of global lithium is mined in the United States, all from one mine in Nevada; the vast majority comes from Chile, Australia, and China.
