The World's Longest Conveyor Belt Is 61 Miles Long

Western Sahara, a territory currently ruled by Morocco, looks like a desolate place. There's little vegetation, but there are substantial phosphate resources. Bou Craa, a mining town in the interior, extracts phosphate ore and ships it to the coast.

Rather than trucking the ore to the coast, the mining company found an inventive way to convey the ore a great distance. It built a conveyor belt to do the job. It caries the ore 61 miles (98 kilometers) across the desert to the port of El-Aaiun. This conveyor belt is the longest in the world.