12 Minute Talk: Wildcat Banks: The Wild West of American Currency

A history detour from the usual hunting and gear content: a solo deep-dive into the Free Banking Era of 1800s America, when thousands of state-chartered banks printed their own currency of wildly varying trustworthiness. The episode traces the origin of "wildcat banks", often deliberately built in remote locations to make redeeming notes nearly impossible, through to the National Banking Acts that ended the era, and finally to how the term survived as "wildcatting" in the American oil industry. Closes with an open question about dowsing/water witching. Presented by AllyMunitions.com