Mount Rainier and a salmon, yes.
Apples, maybe.
An orca? Nope.
That’s the message of the nearly 8,000 responses to a Herald phone poll on which design people prefer for the new commemorative state quarter, which will be minted in spring 2007.
More than half the votes, 4,003, favored the design featuring Mount Rainier and a leaping salmon with the state motto “The Evergreen State.”
Other choices were an outline of the state with salmon, apples and Mount Rainier, which earned 3,314 votes, and a depiction of a Northwest Coast Indian-style orca, which received 401 calls. About 120 callers indicated they didn’t like any of the designs.
Readers were invited to participate in the unscientific poll by phoning The Herald between Jan. 21 and Friday. Readers were also given the option of e-mailing their thoughts about the designs.
The designs were developed from ideas provided by the State Quarter Advisory Commission. Gov. Chris Gregoire formed the commission in April to sort through more than 1,000 ideas from state residents about what the quarter should look like.
The U.S. Mint released the final proposed designs last week.
Residents will be able to tell the governor their preference in an official online poll in March. Gregoire will then choose a final design.
Many praised the design with the state outline, salmon, apples and Mount Rainier as the best representation of the state, but some, including members of the quarter commission, dismissed it as “cluttered.”
“The key is remembering (the quarter’s) only an inch across,” said State Treasurer Michael Murphy, who shrank the designs to actual size.
“It gave a totally different perspective,” he said of the quarter featuring the state outline. “You need a magnifying glass to read ‘The Evergreen State’ in the middle.”
Some who voted for the image of the salmon and Mount Rainier did so with reservations.
“The salmon is too large and looks as if it were going to fly over the mountain,” reader Marie Coleman wrote.
The views of members of the quarter commission were diverse.
| The making of coins starts with a sketch of the design.
At the U.S. Mint, the sketch is made into a sculpture called a plaster the size of a dinner plate. The plaster is cast in hard epoxy and put on a transfer engraving machine. At one end of the machine, a stylus traces the epoxy model to transfer a smaller design into a steel blank, called a master hub. Master hubs are made of both sides of the coin. Each master hub is used to create a master die – the material that strikes the blanks, making them coins. A stamping press holds the blank motionless while the master die strikes it with tremendous force. Stamping presses can churn out 750 coins a minute. The coins are inspected to make sure they meet the Mint’s standards. Bagged coins are shipped to branches of the Federal Reserve Bank. When a bank runs low on coins, it purchases bags from the reserve, and the coins go into circulation. |
The governor’s husband, Mike Gregoire, the commission’s honorary chairman, said he wanted a quarter that represented “all sides of the state” rather than Eastern and Western Washington. Mount Rainier is an international symbol of the state and should be prominently placed on the quarter, he said.
State Sen. Jim Honeyford, R-Sunnyside, said he agreed with Herald readers that the quarter featuring the salmon and Mount Rainier was the best. Honeyford said he would improve the design by enlarging the mountain and “adding some wheat” to represent Eastern Washington.
The orca design received a mixed reaction from readers and commission members. Commission member John Hughes said the orca did not represent the entire state.
Herald writer Blythe Lawrence: 360-352-8623.
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