Coin commemorates 'crossroads' of West

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DENVER - No one among the 25-member Utah delegation attending Monday's ceremonial striking of the state's commemorative quarter at the U.S. Mint here was happier than Bruce Griggs, president of the Utah Numismatic Society.

"It's been a very anxious time since I began collecting all the state quarters," said Griggs, a senior master sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. "I just wish more kids were here because it's a great medium to teach children about geography."

The quarter depicts the historic joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad lines at Promontory, Utah, in May 1869, when the "golden spike" was driven, completing the transcontinental railroad route.

The coin design shows two locomotives nose-to-nose with the spike between the two engines, and the words ''CROSSROADS OF THE WEST'' etched above the trains.

Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert led the Utah delegation to Colorado for the ceremony. In brief remarks, Herbert picked up on the crossroads theme, noting that although modes of transportation have changed since the 19th century, Utah is still at the forefront of the American West in the 21st century.

"In economic growth, transportation, culture and with our population growth, we are still the crossroads of the country," Herbert said.

Donning safety glasses and earplugs to drown out the din from the mint's presses, which churn out 750 coins per minute, the delegation members were allowed, one by one, to punch the button that stamps, or strikes, the inscription on the coin.

The quarters then slid down a chute from the press into the waiting hands of U.S. Mint die-setter Mark Weaver, who handed the coins to each beaming recipient.

Delegates - most of them lawmakers and representatives of the arts, tourism and cultural communities - posed for photographs before returning the quarters to treasury officials. Each person at the ceremony will get a framed memorial quarter sent to them at a later date, said mint spokesman Guillermo Hernandez.

Demand from retailers will determine how many of the Utah quarters are ultimately minted, he added.

The winning quarter design was chosen by residents after more than 5,000 submissions - more than 98 percent from schoolchildren - were sent to the Utah Commemorative Quarter Commission, said commission president Margaret Hunt.

Three themes were chosen for further review: winter sports, a beehive and the golden spike.

"Of the 130,00 people who weighed in, the vote was 3-to-1 in favor of the locomotives," Hunt said. "It created an amazing buzz around the state."

Hunt said the selection and design of the coin, which also features a ''UTAH 1896'' inscription across the top of the coin to denote the year Utah was admitted as a state, was "laborious" but in the end the commission was pleased with the design.

"We looked at other states' quarters and made a decision to keep ours clean and simple with one theme," she said.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. announced the winning coin design on May 10, 2006, the 137th anniversary of the joining of the two railroad tracks.

The site of the linking of the two railroads, about 90 miles northwest of Salt Lake City in Box Elder County, opened up the western United States to expansion and fueled economic and population growth.

"It reduced the time it used to take for travel between New York and San Francisco from six months to five days," said Maggie Johnston of the National Park Service. "It took that long whether you walked with your oxen or took a boat around South America because there were no other real transportation routes west of the Mississippi."

Johnston is superintendent of the Golden Spike National Historic Site, which is observing the 50th anniversary of its historic designation by Congress.