May 6, 2004
Our Two Bits
The new Oregon state quarter should be a design featuring Mount Hood and the Columbia River
The drawing of a snowcapped Mount Hood, viewed from the east across a sweeping turn of the Columbia River, a ponderosa forest in the foreground, looks like it came straight from pioneer journals.
This image belongs on Oregon's state quarter.
The other three designs the Oregon Commemorative Coin Commission will consider Friday all are fitting in one way or another, but none captures Oregon as completely as the design with a towering Cascade peak and the Columbia River.
The salmon is too narrow an icon to represent the entire state. Crater Lake is stunning and unique, but it will not immediately say "Oregon" to the millions of Americans who will soon hold these quarters in their hands. The prairie schooner evokes the history of the Oregon Trail, but its stark design makes the state look bleak and forbidding.
It's impossible to squeeze everything Oregon onto one quarter, but the design with Mount Hood and the mighty Columbia, seen from the same vantage point of the first explorers and pioneers, comes the closest. The red-tailed hawk, about to soar off the edge of the coin, also captures the sense of freedom and possibility in Oregon.
When it meets tomorrow, the coin commission also should consider the recent findings into the origin of the word "Oregon." A Linfield anthropology professor and a Smithsonian linguist persuasively argue that "Oregon," the last mystery of the state names, actually comes from a Native American term for "beautiful river."
The name fits Oregon.
So does this quarter.