Focht Family Blog

Thursday we decided to go to Denver for the day and try to take the tour at the US Mint. They told us if you wanted to get into the walk-in tour that you needed to sign up early so we were there by 8:00 and I was able to get us signed up on the 12:00 tour.

While we were waiting we drove to Hammond’s Candies. They are one of the few places that still makes candy canes by hand. They specialize in candy canes, lollipops, and hard candies but the also make some chocolates and caramels. Here is a picture of the outside of their store. On one side of the building they have a Santa Claus that is climbing the wall.

While waiting for the first tour of the day to start we walked around and looked at their displays. The 5 lb. candy cane was one of my favorites.

They first show you a quick 5 minute movie showing the process of how they make the candies. Here is the family watching the process through the windows.

Here is the table where they are pulling the candy through a machine, twisting it to make the swirl and then the women are hand rolling the candy pieces into lollipops and placing the sticks in them. In another room they hand bag each lollipop and put a twisty tie and bow on each one.

At another table they put together slabs of colored sugar to form the base for the candies. The table has flames at the back that keeps the table at 220 degrees so the sugar stays soft. On this day they took a slab of red, white, and blue and formed it into a layered brick that they then stretch out and put through a ribbon machine that makes ribbon candies. This batch was for Fourth of July and was strawberry flavored.

Joshua was enjoying watching the candy being made but he was enjoying being a ham for the camera a little bit more.

While we were driving back to the US Mint for our tour we spotted a sculpture that I couldn’t resist getting a picture of.

The tour of the US Mint was very interesting. We were not allowed to bring in cameras or cell phones that had cameras on them. All you were allowed to bring in was a small folding wallet that could hold ID. You couldn’t even have a wallet big enough for a checkbook. I went in with my license and credit card in my back pocket. :)

Everyone has to go through a metal detector to get in. Mom had to take her shoes off because the detector went off when she went through. She had forgotten that her shoes have springs in the soles and apparently it was enough to set off the detector. The first part is a room that has displays of different forms of money that has been used over the years. It was very interesting. They even had displays of money from biblical times.

Next they hand out a souvenir before taking you into the main building where you see the coins being made. The souvenir is a penny and a penny slug in a plastic bag. Our pennies were all 2008D’s. The slug is a penny that doesn’t have anything printed on either side. The Denver mint produces all of the coins for west of the Mississippi. The day we were there they were running pennies. Samantha asked and she was told that they produce 15 million pennies a day.

Towards the end they showed a display of their new program which is one dollar coins with each president on it. They start with George Washington and will go through each president. The catch is the presidents have to be dead for at least two years and they can’t skip a president. So although Reagan is dead they have to wait until Carter is dead for at least two years before they can continue. Right now they will continue through until 2016.

They then show you where they package the uncirculated coins. Apparently Philadelphia sends Denver their sets and Denver boxes the full sets together. The last part of the tour takes you through the original building with the original wiring and fixtures. You get to see the original guard box that hangs between the staircase pointing towards the original doors. It is a very small box that has two small windows and two small holes under the windows for the gun barrels to stick out. You get to exit out of the original doors that weigh 2000 lbs each and still have the original hinges in them.

It was a very informative tour. I think everyone enjoyed it, except maybe Josh. We had to keep telling him to be quiet and then halfway through the tour he fell asleep. :) Timmy was also worn out by the end of the morning so he decided to take a nap on grandma’s lap on the way home.