Featured The Oregon Trail Memorial Association, Inc.

Love that coin! This is the next coin I'll be acquiring for my 7070 set. My second favorite behind the Spanish trail half which is beyond my budget. Thanks for the history!

 

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“The new 1934 Oregon Trail Memorial Half Dollar, just off the Denver mint, commemorates the hundredth anniversary of three significant events in American history.

First of these is the founding of old Fort Hall, in what is now Idaho. It was one hundred years ago the Nathaniel J. Wyeth, an intrepid cod-fisherman from Massachusetts rolled across the Rockies along the Oregon Trail with covered wagons. The goods he carried were intended for the Rocky Mountains Fur Company-ordered by of its leaders, Milton Sublette, but by the time Wyeth arrived; Sublette had developed other interests and broke his bargain with the Yankee fisherman.

‘All right,’ returned the doughty New Englander, ‘but I’ll roll a stone in your dooryard you won’t get out.’ And straightaway Wyeth drove on to a strategic spot on the Snake River planted a trading post there and set up a rival business against the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. He named the post Fort Hall after the man who had backed his enterprise. Later the Hudson Bay Company, a British concern who wanted to keep Americans out of the Oregon territory, squeezed Wyeth into selling Fort Hall to them. In after years it played a great part as a way station to Oregon and California.

This year thousands of people will commemorate its founding with the Fort Hall Centennial Celebration, Aug. 1-8, held in Pocatello, Idaho and the surrounding places. This 1934 issue of the Oregon Trail coin commemorates the event.

The second centennial it commemorates is the founding of old Fort Laramie in what is now Wyoming. Milton Sublette with his brother Captain ‘Billy’ Sublette and Campbell-planted this trading post out there at the junction of the North Platte and the Laramie rivers in 1834.

No other post is better known than this pioneer Fort Laramie. Hundred of thousands of American pioneers made it a way station on their trek west.

A third event being remembered this year is the pioneer missionary venture into the far west. It was headed by the intrepid Jason Lee, a minister of the Methodist faith. The mission was brought about as a response to the call of the Indians for the ‘White Man’s Book of Heaven.’ Several Indian Chiefs had come more than two thousand miles out of the Northwest to General Clark in Saint Louis with the request for the gospel message. Jason Lee and his brother Daniel with others responded to the call.

Not long ago an ‘ox mobile’-a covered wagon built on an automobile chassis left Boston to follow the trail of these pioneer missionaries. The participants in the new trek will participate in a pageant re-enacting ‘The First Sermon’ preached west of the Rockies-which is part of the Fort Hall centennial.

The 1934 Oregon Trail Coin commemorates all three of these significant historical events.

Howard R. Driggs

President, Oregon Trail Association”10

10 The Coin Collectors Journal, A Tri-Centennial Coin, August, 1934, p. 97-98.


1938 Oregon Trail Memorial Association brochure. Most of the brochure recounts the accomplishments of the association up till 1938, some text pertains to the sale of 1938 half dollars. Courtesy of Stacks Bowers Galleries.


1938 Oregon Trail Memorial Association black-and-white brochure. Most of the brochure recounts the accomplishments of the association up till 1938, some text pertains to the sale of 1938 half dollars. Courtesy of Stacks Bowers Galleries.


1938 Oregon Trail Memorial Association black-and-white brochure. Most of the brochure recounts the accomplishments of the association up till 1938, some text pertains to the sale of 1938 half dollars. Courtesy of Stacks Bowers Galleries.

 

OTMA to Walter P. Nichols concerning the 1939 Oregon trail Half Dollar.

“The Oregon Trail commemorative half dollars furnished the subject of this notice dated October 29, 1938. As it turned out, the 1938 [sic] Oregon Trail half dollars were the lowest mintage issue and later became quite valuable.”11

11 An Inside View of the Coin Hobby in the 1930s: The Walter P. Nichols File, Edited by Q. David Bowers, Bowers and Merena Galleries, Inc., Copyright 1984 by Bowers and Merena Galleries, Inc, p. 122.

The End.


Hope most liked the history lesson.

 

I love it. You do a great job of sharing a lot of cool information.

 

Thanks Larry!

Thanks also for all the "likes" and Peter for the "Featured."

 

To pivot the topic a bit, if and when your body of work on classic commems goes into print form, I suggest a multi-volume, hardbound, cloth covered, with library slipcase format.

 

Thank you for posting this topic, the history behind these coins is fascinating.

My main numismatic interests are non-US coins and some types of medals and tokens but I finally purchased an Oregon Trail half-dollar in 2018.


United States Commemorative Half Dollar - Oregon Trail Memorial 1938-S

My great-great grandmother Minerva travelled from Ohio to California in 1851-1852 in a covered wagon. The first part of the route was on the Oregon Trail, then a stop in Salt Lake City, and then on a trail to California. She was 16 years old when she started the trip.

 

Very nice, This is one on my want list and has been for a while.

 

That would be Awesome!

 

Nice history. thanks for posting it. Nice Oregon also.