I was researching Great Depression Era Coinage for a article that I was doing for the YN literary contest and stumbled across a story worth sharing. Today I will talk about how Laura Gardin Fraser won the Washington Quarter deign contest, how John Flanagan's design got minted instead, and how she got her well deserved deign back on the 2022 quarter!

First we will have to go way back to 1932 when Gardin Fraser won the design for the Washington half dollar in 1932. The mint then decided to make it the quarter because they weren't minting many half dollars so they shrunk her design to fir a quarter. The people who held the competition to win the design were the Washington Bicentennial committee where Gardin Fraser's design won. They sent it to the treasury where the current Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon disagreed with it and said that the treasury never approved the design. He held his own competition and personally selected John Flanagan's design. Flanagan's quarter design persisted until 2022. 

In late 2021 they decided to switch the obverse design to something different. They picked out 11 different submissions with Washington on them. They sent the designs to the the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) and the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) to pick the final design. Laura Gardin Fraser's deign won and you can now find her new obverse design in circulation!

It's a very interesting story and I feel that Gardin Fraser's design should've won in the first contest fair and square not hand picked by the Treasury Secretary who didn't like this design. All the other submitted designs were nice too and I will put up some pictures of those. You may already know this story but for those who don't it is very fascinating and it was new to my ears!

Thanks for reading my blog and have a great day!

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