1860

— Lower Downtown Walking Tour —

In the 1860's, when gold from Colorado's grubstakes began flowing into Denver at a mad pace, the costly and risky problem of shipping it to banks back East was neatly solved by Clark, Gruber and Co. In a building near this site, the banking firm began minting gold coins from raw metal in August 1860. The service was wildly popular among locals. This was one of the few times and places in U.S. history that a financial institution simultaneously conducted commercial banking and a gold coin minting operation. However, when Congress moved to prohibit the private mining of coins in 1863, the U.S. Treasury recommended at Clark & Gruber be purchased as a U.S. Mint office to assay and purchase gold. Funding for that purchase was made available in 1863, but inexplicably the Denver Branch of the U.S. Mint never "coined" any money on this site. The reorganized banking operations of Clark & Co, moved to 1405 15th Street and received a National Bank charter on May 10, 1865 under the name of First National Bank of Denver. In 1906 the U.S. Mint moved to its present location at 329 West Colfax and began minting coins. The old Clark & Gruber building was demolished in 1906, but the original minting equipment is preserved in the Colorado History Museum at 1300 Broadway.
Lower Downtown District

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