The primary batch of 1925 Fort Vancouver centennial half {dollars} was flown to Fort Vancouver from the US Mint in San Francisco in August 1925; a convincing reproduction of the coin is proven. (Feliks Banel / KIRO radio)
Historic Fort Vancouver will mark its bicentenary in lower than 4 years in 2025. The fort was initially based by the Hudson’s Bay Firm in 1825 and later grew to become a US Military base. It’s now a Nationwide Historic Web site operated by the Nationwide Park Service.
In August 1925, the parish celebrated the fort’s centenary with a sequence of notable occasions. One factor they did was produce an amazing historic pageant, written by a Vancouver resident and with out joke referred to as “The Coming of the White Man”. One other factor they did was get the US Mint to make a commemorative half greenback coin.
And it was that week in 1925 – Saturday, August 1, 1925, to be exact – when a few of the first batch of those cash was flown from San Francisco to Fort Vancouver airfield.
The pilot was the legendary aviator Oakley Kelly, who lately took over the administration of the Fort Vancouver airfield. It took Kelly about 10½ hours to get to and from outdated Crissy Area in San Francisco and again. Some stories say Kelly flew all 50,000 cash to Vancouver, however that will have weighed method an excessive amount of for his WWI DH-4 Liberty biplane to deal with.
Based on different stories, Kelly solely had 500 cash along with her; that is seemingly right, as he additionally introduced an Oregon Journal reporter for the tour. They landed in Eugene, Oregon to refuel.
The design of the Fort Vancouver Centennial Half-Greenback is fairly easy. It exhibits John McLoughlin on the entrance (or the “entrance”, for you coin freaks on the market). McLoughlin was the chief issue accountable for Fort Vancouver for the Hudson’s Bay Firm within the 1820s and 1830s, and is usually thought-about a smart and useful man to anybody who exhibits up on the fort in want of meals or provides. He was also known as the “Father of Oregon” due to his attraction and lots of variety deeds, and he was also called the “Nice White Eagle” as a result of he was properly over six ft tall with an elongated, shiny white head.
The reverse of the coin (or “reverse” within the language of coin collectors, which does not sound very nerdy) exhibits the fort with a fur catcher in entrance of it and Mount Hood seen within the distance. The phrases “FORT VANCOUVER CENTENNIAL / VANCOUVER WASHINGTON / FOUNDED 1825 BY HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY” are stamped on the again.
Due to an administrative snafu within the nation’s capital, the Fort Vancouver coin nearly did not seem in time. The creation of the coin required federal laws championed by Washington’s US Consultant Albert Johnson, who’s now thought-about a infamous determine for his help for the 1924 Immigration Act.
The snafu got here when confusion arose within the writing pool and the Fort Vancouver coin was lumped along with a coin to mark the “Diamond Jubilee” (or seventy fifth anniversary) of California statehood. The unique wording of the invoice made it sound like Fort Vancouver was in California and solely 75 years outdated.
Confusion was cleared and the invoice was signed by President Calvin Coolidge in February 1925. The US Mint was approved to make as much as 300,000 of the cash, however the first and solely batch consisted of solely 50,000 cash. The Vancouver Centennial Company, which was basically a not-for-profit group based by group leaders in Clark County and run by Vancouver’s Colombian newspaper writer Herbert J. Campbell, was apparently in a position to buy the cash at face worth from the US Mint. They then offered them in and round Vancouver for a greenback to boost cash for the centenary.
However one thing was fallacious. Except for that first batch of fifty,000 cash, which was the one batch, about 36,000 of them had been later returned for refund by Centennial Company and melted down by the US Mint, which means solely about 14,000 of the cash had been distributed. For instance, the Fort Vancouver centenary half greenback is comparatively uncommon in comparison with different commemorative cash from the interval.
Coupled with the melted returns, another components of the story are fairly twisted. One in all them is that Charles A. Watts, the secretary of the Centennial Company – who has been described by some as the primary pressure behind the making of the coin – dedicated suicide on the night of August 21, 1925 on the Centennial Pageant web site in the course of the competition week. Some sources level to monetary constraints as a think about Watts’ suicide.
In the meantime, an order for 1,000 cash was despatched to the Hudson’s Bay Firm headquarters in Manitoba, the place they seem to have remained untouched till they had been stolen by an worker and given out in and round Winnipeg within the early Eighties.
Fort Vancouver Centennial Cash in varied states and provenances sells for round $ 400 and up on eBay. Replicas – and really convincing ones at that – can be found for a couple of {dollars} every. When shopping for, store fastidiously and search recommendation from somebody who’s educated about coin gathering.
For document, different commemorative cash depicting Washington State places could be the Washington State Quarter of 2007 and the Olympic Nationwide Park Quarter of 2011. You would additionally rely the Oregon Path Half-Greenback, which made within the Nineteen Twenties and Thirties for a number of years and Lewis & Clark’s 2004 bicentennial silver greenback.
It’s believed that a lot of Fort Vancouver’s centennial cash had been in circulation within the Nineteen Twenties.
In simply 4 years, the non-profit group Mates of Fort Vancouver will begin planning for the bicentenary in 2025. It has not but been determined whether or not a commemorative coin ought to be created for this milestone or not.
Heads or tails, I do not want a cent for my ideas, so listed below are my two cents: I’d say undoubtedly produce a Fort Vancouver bicentenary coin – and do not use wooden nickel.
You may hear Feliks on Seattle’s Morning Information each Wednesday and Friday morning, learn extra about him right here, and subscribe to the Resident Historian Podcast right here. If in case you have a narrative thought, please ship an e mail to Feliks right here.
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