The Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar was a 50-cent piece struck intermittently by the United States Bureau of the Mint between 1926 and 1939. The coin was designed by Laura Gardin Fraser and James Earle Fraser, and commemorates those who traveled the Oregon Trail and settled the Pacific Coast in the mid-19th century. Congress authorized six million half dollars, and placed no restriction on when or at what mint the coins would be struck.
About Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar in brief
The Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar was a 50-cent piece struck intermittently by the United States Bureau of the Mint between 1926 and 1939. The coin was designed by Laura Gardin Fraser and James Earle Fraser, and commemorates those who traveled the Oregon Trail and settled the Pacific Coast in the mid-19th century. Ohio-born Ezra Meeker had traveled the Trail with his family in 1852 and spent the final two decades of his long life publicizing the Trail, that it should not be forgotten. In 1926, at age 95, he appeared before a Senate committee, requesting that the government issue a commemorative coin that could be sold to raise money for markers to show where the Trail had been. Congress authorized six million half dollars, and placed no restriction on when or at what mint the coins would be struck. Struck over a lengthy period in small numbers per year, the many varieties produced came to be considered a ripoff by coin collectors, and led to the end, for the time, of the commemorative coins series. Just over 260,000 of the 6,000,000 authorized coins were struck, of which about 60,000 were melted. The Oregon Trail memorial half dollar stemmed from various efforts by Idahoans who favored the preservation of the site of Fort Hall, an important way station on the Trail. The idea was sparked by the issuance of the 1925 Stone Mountain Memorial halfdollar, which caused Mabel Murphy, wife of an Idaho newspaperman, to propose to her husband the striking of an Oregon Trail coin, the profits from which could be used for preservation.
Mrs. Murphy would not live to see the coin issued, dying of tuberculosis, November 30, 1925, but her colleagues pursued the idea for the coin and it was finally struck in 1926. In some years between 1933 and 1939, it had small quantities of the half dollar coined, in some years from all three operating mints to produce mintmarked varieties. Collectors complained that some of the issues were controlled by coin dealers, and individual collectors had to pay high prices. By one estimate, 20,000 people lie in unmarked graves. Despite the complaints, the OTMA had difficulty in selling the coins, and they remained available from the successor organization as late as 1953. The U.S. Mint has been widely praised for its design, and the coin has been hailed as one of the best commemorative pieces of the 20th century, along with the New England Liberty Medal and the Washington Centennial Medal of Honor. For more information, go to: http://www.usmint.gov/ commemorative/Oregon-Trail-Memorial-Half-Dollars/index.html. For information on how to get your hands on a piece of this coin, call 1-800-273-8255 or go to www.Oregon-trail-memorial-half-dollars.org. For details on the Idaho Trail Covered Wagon Coin, visit Idaho State Journal.
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This page is based on the article Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
