The United States Mint announced on Wednesday that the first in its “America the Beautiful” series of quarters will feature Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, which was set aside for preservation by the federal government in 1832. Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming will be featured second. Other sites to be honored in the 56-coin series include the Olympic Mountains of Washington, the tallgrass prairie of Kansas and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The “heads” side of the coin will still feature George Washington.
Each state and territory will be featured in the series, which will end in 2021 with the Tuskegee Airmen memorial in Alabama.
New coins will be issued in the order that Congress approved the national sites. While Yellowstone is considered the first national park, the government set aside Hot Springs four decades earlier.
New coins will be released about every 10 weeks beginning in early 2010. Designs have not been made public.
Source: nytimes.com
