New Orleans. Beginning coining operations in 1838, until 1908 New Orleans held the record for the lowest denomination U.S. coin struck by an American branch mint—the 1851o silver 3-cent piece. But then came the Civil War and the 1861o Louisiana and Confederate half-dollars.
It was a difficult episode to forget. (And the broken South had no pressing need for new coins.) Not for more than a dozen years after the Civil War did New Orleans get the chance to strike American coinage. But it did, finally, in 1879. (It was the only Southern mint to reopen—Charlotte and Dahlonega, both of which had coined only gold, never did.)
Many New Orleans’ coins—this 1909o half, maybe—journeyed up the Mississippi River to St. Louis and back, doing this and that, being passed back and forth in riverboat card games and getting wet, maybe, in the watery tracks left by beer glasses on bar-tops. Or maybe they did more respectable work. There was always plenty for a big silver coin to do.
But the railroad was more and more important than the river, and in those days the North, the East, and the West were more and more important than the South. So the New Orleans mint ceased coining operations. This 1909o half-dollar—and the other New Orleans coins of 1909—were the mint’s last.
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