“Dollar” was born here!

At the beginning of November 2025, when the United States stopped minting the penny after 230 years, the eyes are once again drawn to the historical roots of this country’s money. The US dollar, which now accounts for 58% of the world’s financial reserves, has its roots far from US soil. The birthplace of this currency is the small and mountainous town of Jáchymov in the Czech Republic, which has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. (BBC)

Photographer: Eliot Stein / www.bbc.com

The story of the dollar goes back to 1516; The discovery of huge amounts of silver in the Krušné hory mountains revolutionized the area. A local nobleman received a license to mint coins on January 9, 1520. He named these coins in honor of the patron saint of miners, Joachimsthalers, later abbreviated as Thaler.

This nobleman cleverly equated the weight of the thaler with the common coinage of the time. Within a decade, this village of 1,050 people became the mining center of Europe with 18,000 inhabitants. It is estimated that by the middle of the 16th century, about 12,000,000 thalers were minted and spread across the continent.

Photographer: Eliot Stein / www.bbc.com

“Jason Goodwin” (Jason Goodwin) writes in his book “Greenback” that the thaler became the model of the money of many countries; But it was the Dutch “Leeuwendaler” that arrived in modern-day New York, and the English-speaking immigrants changed its pronunciation to “dollar”. Finally, in 1792, the United States adopted the dollar as its official currency.

Despite this rich history, there are no dollars in Yakhimov today. Jan Francovič, the guide of the Royal Mint House museum, which was the place where the first ancestors of the dollar were minted, says:

We only accept Krona, Euro and sometimes Russian Ruble here. I haven’t seen a US dollar here in years.

Photographer: Eliot Stein / www.bbc.com

Tourists who visit this town of 2,300 people today are often unaware of this history. One of the residents of the region says:

No other mining town in the world has been as influential as Yakhimov; But we have forgotten our history.

Yakhimov was not limited to silver. As the silver reserves ran out, the miners encountered a black substance from which the famous physicist, Marie Curie, extracted radium and polonium in 1898. This discovery changed the fate of the city. J Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, wrote his thesis about the uranium-rich shafts of this region.

Photographer: Eliot Stein / www.bbc.com

During the Cold War, the Yakhimov mines were turned into Soviet labor camps, and between 1949 and 1964, about 50,000 political prisoners were employed in these mines to mine uranium for the Soviet atomic arsenal.

Today, Yakhimov is trying to revive its prosperous past by renovating historical buildings and using mineral waters for health tourism. A city where both the symbol of economic power (the dollar) and the symbol of military power (nuclear weapons) have emerged from its soil.

Photographer: Eliot Stein / www.bbc.com

Now that you know that one of the most powerful currencies in the world was born from a small silver mine, what do you think about the connection between economic power and hidden history? Share your opinions and views with us and other Kejaro users.

Cover photo source: www.bbc.com Photographer: Eliot Stein