Another Idahoan checking in.
I don’t like any of the proposed designs for Idaho’s quarter. The best of a bad lot is the Sawtooth Range design. It could have been worse, I suppose. I’m pleasantly surprised that a potato wasn’t featured, like the Georgia peach is, on their quarter.
All of Montana’s design proposals are nice.
I like the Washington state outline with the apple in it. It acknowledges an east of the Cascades thought.
Utah should pick the meeting of the railroads at Promontory. The snowboarder should not be considered.
I was looking at the Wyoming ones, and I at first thought Old Faithful was a mushroom cloud. Then I clicked on New Mexico. YES!
Some of the rejected suggestions are better than the finalists.
Montana: Even before reading everyone else’s comments, I liked the skull looming over the mountains. Yet I’d have really enjoyed seeing how the Custer’s Last Stand option would have been received. It’s a neat design that conveys a sense of history. On a more politically correct note, I think this nature scene is absolutely beautiful.
Washington: The state outline is too cluttered, while the orca is too minimalist. So of the finalists, the center design wins by default. Why wasn’t this design given more consideration? You not only get the state outline and the Indian art, but the motto (and its English translation) as well. I also think the two great mountains should still be in the running.
Idaho: Another vote for the river forming the outline of the map (which I admit I didn’t notice until it was pointed out upthread). Inclusion of a depiction of Evel Knievel’s 1974 attempt to clear the Snake River Canyon would have provided an opportunity to see if the state quarter series would almost literally “jump the shark”.
Wyoming: I’d go with Old Faithful, with the rider in front of fence my second choice. However, I’d really like to see the pronghorn and oil derrick – a nod to both wildlife and human activity, as well as being more representative of the whole state than is a geyser (however famous) tucked away in the northwest corner, closer to Montana than to Casper or Cheyenne.
Utah: I add my voice to the chorus of support for the Golden Spike commemoration mixed with a wish the design could have less resembled an impending railway disaster. If church-state issues could have been avoided, however, an illustration of This Is The Place Monument would have provided an opportunity to acknowledge the state’s Mormon heritage while also “recogniz(ing) the early Spanish explorers and missionaries, the trappers, [and] the Donner-Reed party”.
