A lot of time – and a lot of change – has passed since the U.S. Mint in Denver opened 100 years ago this month.
Horses pulled buggies along unpaved streets, the average Mint worker earned $13 a day and worked 59 hours a week. The first year of operation, the Mint produced about 167 million gold and silver coins valued at $27 million.
These days, the Mint produces about that much in pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and golden dollars in a week.
This summer, the local mint will produce the Colorado quarter, the 38th coin in the Quarters of the States program.
What we now know as the Mint started as an assay office at 16th and Market streets in 1863. It was there that miners brought gold and silver to be assessed for weight and quality, melted and stamped. By 1895, the office processed about $5.6 million in gold and silver annually.
In 1904, the federal government decided to convert the assay office to a mint. Two years later, the first coins were struck at the Denver Mint’s Italian Renaissance-style home at 320 W. Colfax Ave.
Although the Denver facility is the oldest functioning U.S. mint, modern technology is used to make coins, rather than the three presses used to strike the first coins on Feb. 1, 1906.
The Mint celebrated its centennial Wednesday. A time capsule filled with 2006 uncirculated coins and a message signed by Mint employees was placed inside the building.
Fletcher Johnson, who hadn’t been in the Mint since he retired in 1977, said he was impressed by what he saw.
“I imagined that in time everything here would go high-tech,” Johnson said. “It’s gone beyond my expectations.
Staff writer Katherine Crowell contributed to this report.
