National Parks Engraved on Quarters

I picked up the latest 2005 quarter recently. I noticed that the engraving was of a feature found in our National Park Service. And, when I looked back at the five quarters released in 2005, four of them had features which were related to our parks. Here's what I found:

The year started off with California and featured John Muir with a hiking stick staring at Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. The next quarter was for Minnesota and featured the "Land of 10,000 Lakes". Voyageurs National Park is situated on one of those big lakes in Minnesota. The third quarter for the year is for Oregon, which has an attractive scene from Crater Lake National Park. The fourth quarter of the year was for Kansas and features a buffalo and sunflower. A nice design, but doesn't exactly match up with any parks in Kansas. The final quarter of the year is West Virginia and the design features the New River Bridge which crosses the New River Gorge National River. How much do we as a nation value our parklands? It's hard to imagine placing a higher honor to the history and the natural wonder of our parks than to engrave them on our money.

Don't forget nickels. The U.S. Mint has had a 3 year Westward Journey Nickel Series which highlights Thomas Jefferson and the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery journey to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis & Clark are represented in a number of parks across our nation, including Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri, and Fort Clatsop in Astoria, Oregon. In all, 2005 was a pretty good year for our National Parks represented on coins. Any parks in your wallet?