Bong range
Coordinates: 6 ° 49 ′ N , 10 ° 18 ′ W
The Bong Range (also Bong Hills ) is a mountain region in Bong County , in central Liberia .
The vegetation consists of evergreen tropical rainforest . The mountains and elevations of the Bong Range extend over an altitude range of 300 to 645 meters above sea level. The extension is 40 kilometers in the northeast-southwest direction, in the northwest-southeast direction only 15 to 20 kilometers. About 50 kilometers to the northwest is the Kpoe Range as a neighboring mountainous area.
The mountains form a watershed for the Saint Paul River, which runs about 20 kilometers to the north . On the south side of the range is the headwaters of the Farmington River . Liberia's most important road, from the capital Monrovia to the border town of Sanniquellie on the border with Guinea , touches the Bong Range in the south and east. This convenient location was helpful for the economic development of the mountains.
The Bong Range had been a concession area of the DELIMCO , better known as the Bong Mining Company , since 1958 , a Liberian-European mining project in which the Federal Republic of Germany was significantly involved through the steel group ThyssenKrupp and many suppliers.
The Liberian inhabitants called the mountain from which DELIMCO extracts iron ore in open-cast mining, Zawea , which means the treasure site. The ores were processed on site and transported to the loading terminal at Freeport Monrovia using a specially created factory railway, the bong mining train . The factory settlement belonging to the mine was named Bong Town and was a completely self-sufficient city in the 1960s and 1970s.
Web links
- Liberia, simplified geological map (PDF; 1.3 MB) page 24 (English)
- [1] Reminder report on Bong Town
- [2] Evacuation report from Thomas Greve
Individual evidence
- ^ Marion Countess Dönhoff : German pioneers in Liberia . In: Die Zeit , No. 33/1965
- ↑ Bernd Huffschmid: Ore from the jungle. German steelworks secure their supply . In: Die Zeit , No. 19/1966