Twisted History of the Fort Vancouver Centennial Half-Dollar

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Historic Fort Vancouver will mark its bicentenary in less than four years in 2025. The fort was originally founded by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1825 and later became a US Army base. It is now a National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service.

In August 1925, the parish celebrated the fort’s centenary with a series of notable events. One thing they did was produce a great historical pageant, written by a Vancouver resident and without joke called “The Coming of the White Man”. Another thing they did was get the US Mint to make a commemorative half dollar coin.

And it was that week in 1925 – Saturday August 1, 1925 to be precise – when part of the first and batch of these coins was flown from San Francisco to Fort Vancouver airfield.

The pilot was the legendary aviator Oakley Kelly, who recently took over the management of the Fort Vancouver airfield. It took Kelly about 10 and a half hours to get to and from old Crissy Field in San Francisco and back. Some reports say Kelly flew all 50,000 coins to Vancouver, but that would have weighed way too much for his WWI DH-4 Liberty biplane to handle.

According to other reports, Kelly only had 500 coins with her; this is probably correct, as he also brought along an Oregon Journal reporter for the tour. They landed in Eugene, Oregon to refuel.

The design of the Fort Vancouver Centennial Half-Dollar is pretty simple. It shows John McLoughlin on the front (or the “front”, for you coin freaks out there). McLoughlin was the chief factor in charge of Fort Vancouver for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1820s and 1830s, and is generally considered a sensible and helpful man to anyone who shows up at the fort in need of food or supplies. He was often referred to as the “Father of Oregon” because of his seriousness and kindness, and he was also known as the “Great White Eagle” because he was well over six feet tall and had elongated, shiny white hair.

The reverse of the coin (or “reverse” in the language of coin collectors, which doesn’t sound very nerdy) shows the fort with a fur catcher in front of it and Mount Hood visible in the distance. The words “FORT VANCOUVER CENTENNIAL / VANCOUVER WASHINGTON / FOUNDED 1825 BY HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY” are stamped on the back.

Thanks to an administrative snafu in the country’s capital, the Fort Vancouver coin almost didn’t appear in time. The creation of the coin required federal legislation championed by Washington’s US Representative Albert Johnson, who is now considered a notorious figure for his support for the 1924 Immigration Act.

The snafu came when there was confusion in the writing pool and the Fort Vancouver coin was lumped together with a coin for the “Diamond Jubilee” (or 75th anniversary) of California statehood. The original wording of the bill made it sound like Fort Vancouver was in California and only 75 years old.

Confusion was cleared and the bill was signed by President Calvin Coolidge in February 1925. The US Mint was authorized to make up to 300,000 of the coins, but the first and only batch consisted of only 50,000 coins. The Vancouver Centennial Corporation, which was essentially a not-for-profit organization founded by community leaders in Clark County and owned by Vancouvers Colombian Newspaper publisher Herbert J. Campbell was apparently able to acquire the coins from the US Mint at face value. They then sold them in and around Vancouver for a dollar to raise money for the centenary.

But something was wrong. Along with this first batch of 50,000 coins that the only Batch, about 36,000 of which were later returned for a refund by Centennial Corporation and melted down by the US Mint, meaning only about 14,000 of the coins had been distributed. Thus, the Fort Vancouver Centennial Half-Dollar is relatively rare compared to other commemorative coins of the time.

Coupled with the melted returns, some other elements of the story are pretty twisted. One of these is that Charles A. Watts, the secretary of the Centennial Corporation – who has been referred to by some as the main force in making the coin – on the evening of the 21st week of the festival. Some sources point to financial constraints as a factor in Watts’ suicide.

Meanwhile, an order for 1,000 coins was sent to the Hudson’s Bay Company headquarters in Manitoba, where they appear to have remained untouched until they were stolen by an employee and given out in and around Winnipeg in the early 1980s.

Fort Vancouver Centennial Coins in various states and provenances sells for around $ 400 and up on eBay. Replicas – and very convincing ones at that – are available for a few dollars each. When buying, shop carefully and seek advice from someone who is knowledgeable about coin collecting.

For record, other commemorative coins depicting Washington State locations would be the Washington State Quarter of 2007 and the Olympic National Park Quarter of 2011. You could also count the Oregon Trail Half-Dollar, which made in the 1920s and 1930s for several years and the 2004 Lewis & Clark 200-year silver dollar.

It is believed that many of Fort Vancouver’s centennial coins were in circulation in the 1920s.

In just four years, the non-profit group Friends of Fort Vancouver will start planning for the bicentenary in 2025. It has not yet been decided whether a commemorative coin should be created for this milestone or not.

Heads or tails, I don’t need a cent for my thoughts, so here are my two cents: I would say definitely produce a Fort Vancouver bicentenary coin – and don’t use wood nickel.

You can hear Feliks on Seattle’s Morning News every Wednesday and Friday morning, read more from himhere, and subscribe to The Resident Historian podcast here. If you have a story idea, please email Felikshere.

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