ResearchThe Drama of the United States Nickel
The mint doesn't seem to have much of an idea what to do with the nickel. The good ideas get snapped up by all the other coins and the nickel ends up with the leftover designs. The number "5". A "V", Roman for number "5". An Indian. A buffalo. The nickel lacked inspiration for decades.
Then the state of Virginia noticed, and quietly recommended their own native patriot, Thomas Jefferson, and his Virginia home of Monticello to grace the humble nickel. Fine, said all, and it remained that way for 64 years, with Virginia quietly gloating over how they virtually owned the nickel. We had no idea at the time, but picture Virginians hording huge stashes of nickels and nudging each other, snickering "That's our boy! And his house is on the back!" Yes, the nickel was just one steady billboard for advertising the state of Virginia.
Then 2004 came. The 2000's generally saw the Mint itching to revamp all currency. New dollar bills issued by denomination. They launched the state quarters program. We got a new dollar coin, and that went smoothly enough. And now how about that nickel? Yes, old Tommy's had a ride long enough, let's slap a new design on it...
The collective response of Virginia to this news amounted to "Over my dead body! Which is quite a climb!" Chief Deputy Majority Whip and Congressman Eric I. Cantor introduced nothing less than emergency legislation four days after this proposal to retain sculptor Felix Schlag's rendition of Monticello on the reverse, and furthermore to grant his state exclusive control over the future design of nickels. He got quite far, too. The compromise was that they could change the design for just two years, after which the coin's reverse had to return to a picture of Monticello, as worded by Public Law 108-15, the American 5-cent Coin Design Continuity Act.
It's a good thing there weren't any important issues going on at the time to distract us from solving this national crisis, like a war or anything.
Anyway, the Lewis and Clark expedition got a brief stay on the nickel. The first design was based on a rendition of the original Indian Peace Medal commissioned for Lewis and Clark's expedition. It got to run in the first half of 2004. By autumn of that year, the reverse changed again to feature a view of Lewis and Clark's keelboat in full sail, which transported members of the Corps of Discovery expedition and their supplies through the rivers of the Louisiana Territory. This design depicts Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in full uniform, standing in the bow of the keelboat in that Washington-crossing-the-Delaware kind of pose that is actually impossible to maintain on a real-life moving boat.
2005 saw a frantic rush to fill in the rest of the time before Virginia closed the nickel forever. They came up with a coastline and the words, "Ocean in view! Oh, joy!" written by William Clark in his diary upon sighting the Pacific, and a buffalo. The buffalo was the result of lobbying again, this time by a nature interest in the hope of keeping the public interested in the buffalo's continuing recovery after nearly being hunted to extinction. Whoever lobbied for Lewis and Clark must have been crestfallen.
The nickel now sports Jefferson and Monticello again, but brand new images of same. And Virginia has harumphed a few times to let us all know that it thinks we really have some nerve messing with it's coin.