The United States Mint Carson City, Nevada

The Comstock poured out so much silver that the government built a mint to coin it on the spot, rather than ship raw bullion across the country. The Carson City Mint opened in 1870 in a sandstone building raised by prison labor, with Abe Curry as its first superintendent. From 1870 to 1893 it struck gold and silver coins stamped with the distinctive "CC" mintmark, now among the most prized by collectors. When silver coinage was curtailed, the mint closed. The building survives as the Nevada State Museum, its original coin press still on the floor.

What the plaque says

The original Carson City building is a formal balanced, sandstone block edifice, two stories high with a centrally located, cupola. The sandstone blocks were quarried at the Nevada State prison. On March 3, 1862, Congress passed a bill establishing a branch mint in the Territory of Nevada. The output of the Comstock Lode coupled with the high bullion transportation costs to San Francisco proved the necessity of a branch in Nevada. From its opening in 1870 to the closing of the coin operations in 1893, coinage amounted to $49,274,434.30.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson City — 0.3 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 3.5 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 7.2 mi
  The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides
• Sand Harbor — 9.0 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• Federal Government Building (1888-1970) — steps away
• Orion Clemens Home — steps away
• Methodist Church of Carson City — 0.2 mi
• Rinckel Mansion — 0.3 mi