West Point and Denver also provide bullion depository and storage facilities for part of the US Treasury’s gold reserves. The Fort Knox facility in Kentucky is exclusively a bullion depository and not a production facility. In fact, the US Mint is the world’s largest manufacturer of coins and medals, as well as the world’s largest producer of gold and silver bullion coins.Īlthough the US Mint is headquartered in Washington DC, its production facilities are based in four other locations across the US, namely Philadelphia, Denver, West Point in upstate New York, and San Francisco. ![]() Secondly, the US Mint oversees the storage and custody of the United States official gold reserves on behalf of the US Treasury, most notably at the Fort Knox bullion depository in Kentucky.īeyond these functions, the US Mint also manufactures US legal tender circulating coinage, as well as commemorative coins, proof coins, medals, and other numismatic coin products. ![]() Firstly, the US Mint produces the very popular American Eagle gold bullion coins and American Eagle silver bullion coins. In the precious metals world, the US Mint is probably best known for two reasons. Known today as the Old US Mint, the building stands as one of the oldest intact structures in San Francisco.The United States Mint (US Mint) is the official government operated mint of the United States of America. The grandeur and stature of the 1874 building also carried a symbolic message: that the State of California, just twenty-four years old at the time, was truly part of the nation. And as a repository for the United States’ wealth, the Mint housed one-third of the nation’s gold supply in 1934. In the single year of 1877, for instance, it minted about $50 million of the total $83.9 million in gold and silver coins produced by the United St at es. Its initial production far exceeded expectations. This facility was pivotal to the nation’s financial history for a sixty-three-year period, from 1874 until it ceased minting functions in 1937. The second San Francisco Mint, no longer subordinate to Philadelphia, opened at Fifth and Mission Streets in 1874, serving the diverse functions of foundry, fortress, and public bank and firmly declaring the federal government’s control over the young state’s riches. A decade later, with silver from Nevada mines straining its limited capacity, the government began drawing up plans for a larger facility. At its small brick building on Commercial Street, it converted approximately $4 million of miners’ gold into coins in its first year alone. The San Francisco Mint and Assay Office, a subsidiary of the original Philadelphia Mint,opened in response to the gold rush. ![]() In 1854–exactly fifty ears after Hamilton’s untimely death in 1804 and only four years after California became a state–San Francisco became home to one of the first four branches of the US Mint. George Washington named him the United States’ first secretary of the treasury, and the government proceeded to assume the Revolutionary War debts of the new states, implement an income tax system, establish the Bank of the United States, and found the first US Mint. Hamilton, as a Federalist, had long argued for a strong centralized government. The young nation emerged from the Revolutionary War deeply in debt to foreign investors and its own citizens who had bought war bonds. ![]() Alexander Hamilton is widely regarded as the father of the United States’ financial system.
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