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Release date of California State Quarter:
January 31, 2005.
The first quarter released in 2005 honors
California, and is the 31st in the United States Mint's 50 State
Quarters® Program. California was admitted into the Union on September
9, 1850, becoming our Nation’s 31st State.
Nicknamed the "Golden State," California’s quarter depicts naturalist
and conservationist John Muir admiring Yosemite Valley’s monolithic
granite headwall known as "Half Dome" and also contains a soaring
California condor. The coin bears the inscriptions "California," "John
Muir," "Yosemite Valley" and "1850."
In 1849, the year before California gained statehood, the family of
11-year-old John Muir emigrated from Scotland to the United States,
settling in Wisconsin. In 1868, at the age of 30, Muir sailed up the
West Coast and landed in San Francisco. He made his home in the
Yosemite Valley, describing the Sierra Nevada Mountains as "the Range
of Light… the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have
seen." He devoted the rest of his life to the conservation of natural
beauty, publishing more than 300 articles and 10 books that expanded
his naturalist philosophy.
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| The California quarter
depicts naturalist and conservationist John Muir admiring Yosemite
Valley’s monolithic granite headwall known as Half Dome with a soaring
California condor. United States Mint image.
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In 1890, Congress established Yosemite National Park, and in 1892 John
Muir helped form the Sierra Club to protect it, serving as that
organization’s President until his death in 1914.
The California condor, with a wingspan as long as nine feet, is also
featured on the coin in a tribute to the successful repopulation of the
once nearly extinct bird.
The 20-member California State Quarter Commission was formed to solicit
design concepts from California citizens and to review all submissions.
The Commission forwarded 20 design concepts to Governor Gray Davis’s
office for further consideration. From these, five were chosen as
finalists and sent for final review to the United States Mint. Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger chose the final selection from this group of
five. The four other design concepts considered included "Waves and
Sun," "Gold Miner," "Golden Gate Bridge," and the "Giant Sequoia"
design. The Department of Treasury approved the "John Muir/Yosemite
Valley" design on April 15, 2004.
Purchase a California
State Quarter
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