[Rockhounds] Five hundred years after coining the first dollar, a tiny mining town is coming to grips with the many ways it shaped the modern world.

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

The US dollar is the most widely used currency in the world. It is both the
primary de facto global tender and the world’s unofficial gold standard.
According to the International Monetary Fund, 62% of the planet’s financial
reserves are held in US dollars – more than double the total foreign
holdings of euros, yen and renminbi combined. Thirty-one nations have
either adopted it as their official currency or named their money after it;
more than 66 countries peg the value of their currencies to it; and it’s
now accepted in places as far-flung as North Korea, Siberia and research
stations on the North Pole.

Yet, one place where the dollar is not accepted is in the tiny Czech town
of Jáchymov ­– which is ironic, because it was here, tucked deep into the
wooded folds of Bohemia’s Krušné hory mountains, where the dollar
originated 500 years ago in January 1520. But as I pulled a George
Washington one-dollar bill from my wallet in Jáchymov’s 16th-Century Royal
Mint House museum, the very spot where the dollar’s earliest ancestors were
coined, docent Jan Francovič smiled and stopped me.

“I haven’t seen one of these in a long time,” he said, calling over two
colleagues. “In Jáchymov, we only accept koruna, euros or sometimes Russian
rubles. You’re the first American to come here in more than three years.”

Welcome to Jáchymov: a sleepy 2,700-person town near the Czech-German
border that’s both the home of the dollar and the home of no dollars.
Chances are you’ve never heard of the place. You probably didn’t know that
it was just named one of Unesco’s newest World Heritage sites. And you
likely never realised that the currency that powers the free world
originated in this one-road town still reeling from the collapse of
communism that has more brothels than banks.

In fact, you could spend a day walking up and down Jáchymov’s main drag,
past its abandoned Gothic and Renaissance buildings that tumble down the
hill, around its opulent cluster of day spas at the base of the valley and
up to its 16th-Century castle, and never realise it was the birthplace of
the dollar.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200107-welcome-to-jchymov-the-czech-town-that-invented-the-dollar