Dahlonega Mint: Gold Coins from Cherokee Land
Near Helen, Georgia
In eighteen twenty-eight, gold was discovered in the North Georgia mountains, touching off the first major gold rush in American history, a decade before California. Thousands of prospectors flooded into what had been Cherokee territory, and the federal government accelerated the forced removal of the Cherokee people to open the land to mining.
To process the flood of gold, Congress authorized a branch mint at Dahlonega in eighteen thirty-five, and it opened in February of eighteen thirty-eight. Over the next twenty-three years, Dahlonega produced more than one million gold coins worth over six million dollars in one, two-and-a-half, and five-dollar denominations, all stamped with a lowercase D. In eighteen sixty-one, Confederate forces seized the mint. The Confederate Congress closed it that same year. The building burned down in eighteen seventy-eight. North Georgia State University now occupies the site, and its Price Memorial Hall stands on the original mint foundation.
