2016-08-29 Mon

A special law was introduced in 1863 which prohibited banks from producing its own currency in the U.S. The new law had created a lot of problems in those times as it was a common practice for banks to issue their own currencies. Before the Civil War, banknotes were very widely used, but not all of them had the same value in different parts of the country. To counter this issue, the new law was introduced with the help of a centralized currency.

Utah’s creative first forms of currency were discontinued in 1847 which includes some very interesting gold coins. The first gold coins were struck in Salt Lake City in December 1848, days before the first official U.S. mint of California gold was issued in Philadelphia.

The Mormon Battalion entered San Diego during the Mexican-American War and began working for foreman James Marshall at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. They discovered gold in January 1848, which resulted in the famous California gold rush.

They later settled in their own mining town called Mormon Island where the modern-day Utah were minted. 25 $10 pieces were made first and another 21 were made after that. Experts state that the only crucible that was used to melt this raw gold plaster broke.

The December 1848 coins featured the text “Pure Gold” on one side, “Holiness to the Lord” on the other side, a Phrygian cap above the “eye of Jehovah” and clasping hands.

"Pure Gold" was soon replaced with "S.L.C.P.G." – the short form of Salt Lake City Pure Gold. Coins in 1860 included a lion and a beehive symbol, and the gold came from Colorado.

Almost 4,000 of the coins with six separate coin designs were made which were underweight and not all were made of “pure gold” either. The “Mormon Gold” coins were made of about 80 percent gold. Experts state that since they were just pioneers and not assayers, they failed to maintain the purity of the metal.

In the East, the coins were melted down along with other gold coins by the U.S. mint and used to create new U.S. gold coins. In 1861 the minting of these coins was discontinued and only a fraction of the coins exist today.