#551 Why is there so much gold in Fort Knox?

Why is there so much gold in Fort Knox? Because it is far enough away from any coast and is protected by the Appalachian Mountains.

Fort Knox is famous worldwide for being the place where the United States keeps most of its gold. The building isn’t actually called Fort Knox. It is called the US Bullion Depository. Fort Knox is the name of the military base where the Bullion Depository is located. At the moment, 4,580 tons of gold bullion is stored in the vault of the Bullion Depository. That has a value of approximately $300 billion at today’s gold prices.

The US Bullion Depository isn’t the only place where gold is stored in America. There are several other depositories, but Fort Knox is the largest of them. Together, they store America’s gold reserves of 8,133 tons, which is about $450 billion. A country’s gold reserves basically guarantee its currency and instill confidence. The more gold a country has, the more willing people are to invest in the country because they know that they can be paid back in gold even if the country’s currency fails.

Is it safe to keep that much gold in one place? The gold bullion is kept in the vault which is made of concrete reinforced with steel plates and steel beams. The door to the vault weighs 20 tons and is 53 cm thick. The door cannot be drilled, burned, or melted. No one person has the complete combination to the lock. Above the vault, the main building is made of concrete and granite. It has several fences of electrified razor wire. There are security cameras and guard posts everywhere. The gardens have landmines. There are guards with machine guns posted in several places on the roof. Visitors are not allowed to enter the facility. Even the president of America is not allowed in. And if all of that wasn’t enough, the facility is located in the middle of the Fort Knox military base. Even if someone could get through all of that and make their way into the vault, there is 4.2 million kilograms of gold in the vault. Anyone who wanted to steal that would need a fleet of trucks and workers and even then it would take weeks.

So, why is there so much gold at Fort Knox? Construction work on Fort Knox began in 1935 and it was completed in 1936. Before it was built, most of the American gold reserves were kept in New York and Philadelphia. The American government could see in the 1930s that the world was probably heading towards war. It wasn’t likely that any country would be able to invade the US, but the government couldn’t be sure. They decided to move the US gold reserves away from the coasts and further into the center of the continent. They chose the current location of Fort Knox, which is about 1,500 km from any coast and about the same distance from the Appalachian Mountains on the other side. They figured that the location made the gold pretty safe because it would be hard for any country to invade that far inland and planes (at that time) would have trouble flying over the mountains. The last reason why they chose that location was that Fort Knox military base was the home of America’s only completely mechanized cavalry unit, meaning tanks. It wouldn’t be so hard to fly to Fort Knox these days, but it would still be all but impossible for any country to invade that far into mainland America.

They started to transport the gold in January of 1937. They used post office trucks to ship the gold to trains for transport across the country. It took half a year to transport all of the gold. The trucks had a police guard, the trains were guarded, and there were soldiers with machine guns present when the gold was transferred to trucks at the other end. They even used dummy trucks and decoy trains just to be on the safe side.

Fort Knox doesn’t only house America’s gold, it also stores gold for several other countries. That practice started in World War 2, when countries in Europe needed someone safe to deposit their gold and there was nowhere safer than the USA. Other valuables followed suit. The crown of the Hungarian royal family was stored there along with a magna carta, declaration of independence, constitution, a Gutenberg Bible, and numerous other things. They are all as safe as Fort Knox. And this is what I learned today.

Sources

https://www.usmint.gov/news/inside-the-mint/fort-knox-history