The Lodestone Project is an initiative of the Moorhead Healthy Communities Initiative, funded by the Otto Bremer Foundation. It was started in 2007 to provide community members with meaningful information that will help Fargo Moorhead residents make sustainable choices that will then create a sustainable community.

The Lodestone Project is about how we think about the future of Fargo Moorhead. It recognizes that the future is not a foregone conclusion. We can’t expect to grow and thrive and succeed just because we always have.

Lodestones are rocks that are naturally magnetic. They are made of Magnetite, a type of iron ore. A piece of magnetite that has magnetic qualifies is a lodestone.

It is believed that once lighting strikes a magnetite it causes the magnetite particles to align in the right way to produce a magnetic field.

The first compasses were made over 2000 years ago using lodestones. If a long lodestone is freely suspended it will rotate until it lines up with the Earth's poles. Many versions of compasses have been made using this principle.

The word is derived from its early nautical use. "Lode" originally meant a leader, so sailors would "follow the stone" to a specific destination. In the sense of mining, miners also “follow” a lode or rock or minerals to extract the material. The use of a lodestone on board probably made navigation much safer, and it paved the way to creating magnetic compasses and other more sophisticated navigational aides. Lodestones were viewed with some awe by sailors, since the properties of these rocks were quite mysterious.

The term "lodestone" is also used to refer to something or someone with strong attractive properties. Many poets, for example, use the term euphemistically, especially in love poetry. This usage suggests that lodestones have played a very important role in human history and development, since many people have strong associations with the word "lodestone."

Source: http://www.buylodestones.com/aboutlodestones.htm and http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-lodestone.htm