San Francisco Mint
branch of the United States Mint
The San Francisco Mint is a branch of the United States Mint. Opened in 1854 to serve the gold mines of the California gold rush, in twenty years its operations exceeded the capacity of the first building. It moved into a new one in 1874, now known as the Old San Francisco Mint. In 1937 Mint operations moved into a third building, the current one, completed that year.
History
Original United States Mint and Subtreasury (1854)
The San Francisco Mint began operations in 1854 at 608 Commercial Street, just west of Montgomery Street. The building sat between Commercial and Clay Streets and a California Historical Landmark (number 87) plaque can be found today on Commercial. Since June 14, 1970, the building has been listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark.
The mint was established in response to the California gold rush. Within the first year of its operation, the San Francisco mint turned $4 million in gold bullion into coins. Because of the scale of its increase in operations due to economic growth, a new building was soon required.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “San Francisco Mint” as branch of the United States Mint. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as branch of the United States Mint. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3109253. Authority coordinates are 37.770, -122.427. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1854, 1874, 1937 and 1970.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “San Francisco Mint” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.