The 1937 Flood disrupted many lives and events, and one of those events was the transfer of $5.52 billion dollars worth of gold from the Philadelphia Mint and the New York Assay Office (the last public gold refinery in the U.S.) to the newly built U.S. Gold Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Ky. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order requiring Americans to sell their gold coins to the Federal Reserve in exchange for bank notes. As a result, the U.S.