The Early San Francisco Mint
Today communication of new discoveries is almost immediate, and it is perhaps difficult to understand the great excitement that gripped the country when vague rumors of gold discoveries in California were confirmed. When James Marshall first identified the specks of yellow metal in early 1848, little did he know how great the effect would be. Except when the nation was at war, popular frenzy was perhaps at its greatest ever.
The news spread like wildfire throughout the States east of the Mississippi, and there were soon tens of thousands of men heading for the promised land. Within two years, there were nearly 20 times as many people in California as had been there in 1848. However, the joy of backbreaking work with pan or shovel soon grew thin, and the miners increasingly wanted the amenities of home, including a stable currency.
By an odd quirk of fate, the currency shortage in the West during the late 1840s and early 1850s was not the result of government bungling, as many thought, but rather the success of the miners themselves. So much gold had been torn from the earth in California that world currencies had been undermined. Many countries, including the United States, relied on a delicate balance between gold and silver to maintain a bimetallic system where the two metals could be
