Meet The Old, Old Mint.

My mom was born and raised in San Francisco. She used to refer to the U.S. Mint at 5th and Mission as the old mint, and the one at Duboce (still active) as the new mint. But the first U.S. mint in San Francisco opened in 1854 on Commercial Street to handle the flood of riches created by the Gold Rush. By the early 1870s it had outgrown this cramped site, and was replaced by the Old Mint which opened in 1874 at 5th & Mission.

Today, the original mint is home to the San Francisco Historical Society Museum. I visited recently (Free, though they recommend a $10 donation); here's what I saw...

Lest we forget.

Exterior wall of the original mint.

One part of an enormous panoramic photo of San Francisco, 1878. If you look close you'll see there was one orphanage for Catholic children, and another one for Protestant kids.

Rubble from the 1906 Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco.

Discrimination. As old as America itself. (That $20 in 1850 is equal to about $900 today.)

The ship of gold. A display featuring a model of the SS Central America, which famously sank in 1857 with 425 passengers on board, and 2,000 gold rush coins minted in SF, off Charleston, South Carolina. Over 130 years later the ship and gold were recovered.

Twisted wire cable. Great for a lot more than cable cars.

Souvenirs from the 1915 Panama Pacific International Expo in San Francisco. (The landfill used to create it gave us the Marina District.) And the 1939-1940 World's Fair on Treasure Island. (More landfill, used by the Navy during WWII, and most recently converted into SF housing and commercial uses like movie soundstages.

Waiting for the invention of the horse. Wells Fargo began as a transportation company and pivoted into a banking behemoth.

A special exhibit featuring San Francisco imagery used in vintage pinball machines.

The lower level holds the vault, dedicated to Warren Hinckle, a famous local muckraking journalist and truly original San Francisco character. He was pretty popular, well, not with the cops.

There were a lot of these highly detailed 3-D scale models celebrating different SF buildings and neighborhoods. Very much works of art.

The Empire Park is next door, a nice little sanctuary that's open most days for several hours.

Empire Park almost certainly refers to Emperor Joshua Norton. Probably the most colorful character the city has ever produced. His official title: Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Read about him! (He's a central character in an old episode of Bonanza, but where's his feature film?) On the other side of the museum is the spot Emperor Norton rented a room for many years. A room that made an SRO look like a mansion. That building burned down during the '06 Quake & Fire, but this is the spot. You can lease it!

OK, that's it. I probably overdid the photos, but I like this stuff.