An Efficient Engineer, Part 1

Gold was discovered in California in January 1848, changing the course of world history; however, the establishment of a federal mint at San Francisco was torturous. As early as the summer of 1848, the military governor of California, Richard Barnes Mason, promised Californians that “I shall strongly recommend in my first communication to the Department [of the Treasury] the immediate establishment of a mint in Upper California.”

Authorizing the San Francisco Mint

True to his word, Mason begged the government to build a mint at San Francisco. President James K. Polk responded to this request in his annual message to Congress by announcing that “it is deemed of vast importance that a branch of the Mint of the United States be authorized to be established at your present session in California.”

Congress, however, ignored Polk’s demand, and over the next three years, eastern states’ interests successfully blocked legislation to establish a mint in California. Finally, in December 1851, the Senate passed a bill to fund a branch mint; however, the New York delegation in the House of Representatives kept the legislation in committee for over six months, relenting only after extracting the promise of an assay office in New York City.

Finally, on August 31, 1852, Congress passed the Civil and Diplomatic Act, establishing the branch mint at San Francisco, but Section 10 of the law contained a poison pill:

That before the Secretary of the Treasury shall procure or erect the buildings provided for in the second section of this act, or commence operations under any of the provisions of the same, at San Francisco, State of California, it shall be his duty to make a contract or contracts for the erection of said buildings, and procuring the machinery necessary for the operations of said Mint, at a sum or sums which shall not in the whole exceed the sum of three hundred thousand dollars.

The Treasury Department provided Congress with an estimated cost of $850,000 for the buildings and machinery for the new mint. However, the Civil and Diplomatic Act slashed this budget by 65 percent—Congress seemed intent upon keeping California from having its own mint.

Eckfeldt’s Expertise

Seeing an opportunity, Curtis, Perry & Ward, the company that had been operating the United States Assay Office in San Francisco, began plans to convert the assay office building into a world-class mint. This required the skills of an engineer and machinist capable of recreating the machinery used at the Philadelphia Mint. Fortunately, Curtis, Perry & Ward was able to hire 24-year-old John M. Eckfeldt, son of the Philadelphia Mint’s coin room foreman and a member of the Eckfeldt dynasty at the Philadelphia Mint.

Eckfeldt arrived in San Francisco on the steamship Corus on November 11, 1852, and immediately set about outfitting the assay office. By February 1853, he had built and installed new machinery in San Francisco that was on par with that of the Philadelphia Mint. As a result, the quality of coinage being issued by the assay office improved dramatically. Newspapers described Eckfeldt as an “efficient mechanic and gentlemanly superintendent.” They also reported that the assay office could produce 120 planchets per minute on its new cutting press and had been striking 36,000 double eagles (gold $20) per day
on Eckfeldt’s steam-powered coining press.

On May 21, 1853, the Daily Alta California announced that Curtis, Perry & Ward had been awarded the contract to run the branch mint at San Francisco. This was undoubtedly due in large part to the work of Eckfeldt, who remained in the employment of the U.S. Mint until his death in 1876.

Next month, I’ll discuss Eckfeldt’s work on the Carson City Mint and the second San Francisco Mint.

A version of this article appears in the December 2025 issue of The Numismatist (money.org).