Denver Days: Enter the Mint

Few people crossed the Denver Capitol District grounds at 6:30 a.m. Thursday in late January. I had a little time to wander the grounds, with massive parks (and one busy road) separating the Colorado state capitol and Denver City Hall. An innocuous building just south of City Hall plays a bigger role in the West. 

The Denver U.S. Mint only produces coins, no paper money, but any U.S. coin with a tiny “D” on its front face originated here. Denver landed a branch mint because of the Colorado gold and silver rush. In 1858, Denver businessmen created their own mint/assay office in Colorado Territory, and the U.S. government bought the building and assets in 1863, a year after Congress authorized a Denver-area mint. There were Civil War concerns about Confederates targeting Colorado Territory for its natural resources. 

You won’t see any pictures from inside the Denver Mint, as no photos are allowed inside due to the printing of circulated money. But they offer free tours Monday through Thursday just for registering, and the tour guides are well-informed and talkative. Winter is the slow season at the Mint, with summer tours filling fast. I took the 7:30 a.m. tour, and it included just two other people. 

With an operating mint, Denver is in rare company. The U.S. Treasury Department operates mints in Philadelphia (the original capitol), Denver, and San Francisco (another gold rush location), and West Point, which produces American Eagle coins from precious metals, as well as commemorative coins. In the mint atrium, Wells Fargo has curated in-depth displays about money and the western U.S. 

Beginning with some historic displays to show how money manufacturing has changed, the tour quickly came to an overlook of the production floor, where blank metal disks are struck with dies to product nickels, dimes, quarters, and more. 

This morning, the Denver Mint was producing new coin designs for the U.S. 250th anniversary. But not everything it produces is meant for the bank - The mint also stamped coins of Batman and Superman for commemorative sets based on D.C. superheroes. Workers tended to the massive machines to ensure the coins were stamped accurately. Occasionally we caught eyes with Mint workers and they waved. 

Not everything involves printing coins. The Denver Mint holds 16 percent of the Treasury’s gold deposit, with the vast majority at Fort Knox in Kentucky and the remainder at West Point. Behind a Plexiglass window into a bank vault, the Denver Mint displayed three solid gold bars worth millions. 

The tour concludes in the former mint lobby, which dates to the early 1900s and has large murals from Italian-American artist Vincent Aderente that salute commerce, mining, and manufacturing. We only had so long to admire them, since our tour guide had to head back to lead a 9 a.m. tour. With that, our small tour group was out on the street in the Capital District, the mint once again off-limits. 

Mint exit.