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Thanks to the Westward Journey Nickel Series™, America's nickel changed for the first time in 66 years, in 2004! Two new designs took their turns on the back of the nickel in 2004, while the image of President Thomas Jefferson on the front was the same as the image on earlier nickels. But the front of the 2005 and 2006 nickels showed new images of Jefferson as well. The new designs celebrate two events of about 200 years before: the Louisiana Purchase and the westward journey of Lewis and Clark. When Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States, he bought a piece of land from France called "Louisiana," an area much larger than the state of Louisiana today...so large, in fact, that buying it made the United States twice as large as it had been before. Since Thomas Jefferson was already on the nickel, it was the perfect coin on which to celebrate the Louisiana Purchase. In 1804, President Jefferson sent a group led by Lewis and Clark to explore this land, to describe the flora (plants) and fauna (animals) they saw, and to find a water route to the Pacific Ocean if there was one.
The design that was used on Jefferson's Peace Medal was used on the first of the new nickels, the Peace Medal Nickel. It shows the hand of a Native American and the hand of a European-American clasped in a friendly handshake below a crossed pipe and tomahawk. The words "Louisiana Purchase" are inscribed above the date of the purchase, 1803. The second
nickel of 2004 showed the
keelboat that was part
of the transportation for Lewis
and Clark's expedition. In this
Keelboat Nickel design, captains
Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark are standing on deck at
the start of their famous trip.
The new design on the front of the 2005 nickels featured a new image of Thomas Jefferson. The word "Liberty" appears in a style that is like Jefferson's own handwriting.
The
second
reverse
design
shows a
view of
the
Pacific
Ocean,
the goal
that the
Lewis
and
Clark
Expedition
reached
after
more
than a
year of
hard
travel.
The
scene
surrounds
a quote
written
by
Captain
Clark:
"Ocean
in
view!
O! The
joy!"
Hopes were dashed when the Expedition proved that the Missouri River was not part of a Northwest Passage across the continent by water and that there were two mountain ranges to cross instead of one.
The reverse design, although very much like the pre-2004 design, is actually very different. The new image takes advantage of the advances in coin-making technology to produce a crisper, more detailed Monticello than has ever been seen on the five-cent coin.
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Jefferson
had a medal made as a token of
peace, which we call his "
The
first
new 2005
design
on the
nickel's
reverse
(back)
features
the
American
bison,
also
called a
