The corporation formed to handle Fort Vancouver’s 1925 centennial made a coin the center of the celebration. It bore the dual burden of publicizing and financing the gala. On Feb. 24, 1925, the 68th Congress approved the commemorative silver half dollar. This exciting beginning soon unraveled.
After rejecting one design, the mint turned to Laura Gardin Fraser (1894-1966). Fraser reworked the design. She had already completed two half-dollar commemorative coins, one in 1921 for Alabama (the first U.S. coin designed by a woman) and the other in 1922 honoring Ulysses S. Grant.
On the front side of the Fort Vancouver coin, Fraser placed a left-facing profile of John McLoughlin with the dates 1825 and 1925 flanking his head and the coin’s value under his silhouette. On the back, she positioned the figure of a buckskin trapper facing right and holding a long rifle. She spread Fort Vancouver out behind the trapper. Mount Hood rises up behind the fort and over the trapper’s shoulder.
Congress approved minting 300,000 centennial coins. The San Francisco Mint made 50,028 but left off the “S” mintmark for San Francisco. Mary O’Reilly, assistant director for the mint in Washington, D.C., praised the 50-cent piece as “among the finest examples of coinage ever turned out.”
