A Pocketful of History

by Jim Noles

  The same reckoning could be applied to the image of Mount Rainier and its subtle reminder of the brave men whose paths— literally and figuratively—crossed its glaciered slopes. If Washington’s state quarter reminds us of such courage, it will indeed be priceless.

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  IDAHO

  “And Here We Have Idaho . . . ”

  A peregrine falcon haughtily dominates Idaho’s state quarter. Beneath its beak, an outline of the state is engraved, along with both the date, “1890” (the year Idaho entered the Union), and the state motto, “Esta Perpetua.” Translated, that Latin phrase means “May it be forever,” a far more majestic phrase than the state song chorus, “And here we have Idaho, winning her way to fame,” another contender for the coin’s design.

  “May it be forever.” The same could be said of the peregrine falcon, one of the fastest birds in the world. “The flight of this bird is of astonishing rapidity,” John James Audubon once wrote. “It is scarcely ever seen sailing, unless after being disappointed in its attempt to secure the prey which it has been pursuing, and even at such times it merely rises with a broad spiral circuit . . . .”

  But even with its speed, the falcon could not outdistance the perils of the modern age—particularly as the pesticide DDT and its breakdown product, DDE, began to work their way into the bird’s food chain. As the toxic chemicals accumulated in the raptor’s tissues, it increasingly interfered with eggshell production. As a result, female birds laid eggs with shells so thin that they either never hatched or broke prematurely during incubation.

  By the latter half of the twentieth century, the sentiment “may it be forever” seemed an unlikely possibility as the falcon struggled to survive in an increasingly hostile world. By the 1970s, the bird was essentially extirpated in the eastern United States. Even in the craggy vastness of the Rocky Mountains, its population plummeted by two-thirds.

  The falcon was not alone, of course, in its battle to survive in its modern environment. But its prognosis, and that of so many of its fellow species, seemed so grim that in 1973, Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act (ESA). President Richard M. Nixon signed the bill into law on December 28, 1973, at his vacation residence in San Clemente, California.

  “At a time when Americans are more concerned than ever with conserving our natural resources,” Nixon declared, “this legislation provides the Federal Government with needed authority to protect an irreplaceable part of our national heritage—threatened wildlife.” “Nothing,” he added, “is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed. It is a many-faceted treasure, of value to scholars, scientists, and nature lovers alike, and it forms a vital part of the heritage we all share as Americans.”

  By that point, the peregrine falcon was already listed as an endangered species pursuant to the earlier (and weaker) Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966 (along with such other iconic species as the bald eagle, the whooping crane, the Sonoran pronghorn, the Florida manatee, the black-footed ferret, and the Eastern timber wolf). The falcon, as a migratory bird (after all, “peregrine” is derived from the Latin word for “wanderer”), also enjoyed some protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Finally, it was also the beneficiary—arguably, most directly—of such actions as the Environmental Protection Agency’s ban of DDT in 1972.

  It was 1973’s Endangered Species Act, however, that publicly proclaimed it to be federal policy to preserve and protect America’s endangered and threatened species. The act thus naturally became the public face of endangered species protection in the United States for the next three decades. Indeed, as the U.S. Supreme Court described it in the controversial Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill case, it is “the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species ever enacted by a nation.”

  Today, the ESA, as a general matter, attempts to achieve several goals. It outlines the procedures and criteria for listing (and delisting) a species (to include plants) as endangered; prevents any federal action from jeopardizing the continued existence of a listed species; bans the “taking,” import, and export of an endangered species; and controls state and private landowners’ actions that may result in the taking of a species.

  The numbers of such species are considerable. In July 2007, 568 animal species (or distinct population segments of those species) and 746 plant species were listed as endangered or threatened in the United States. Hawaii leads the nation with 329, followed by California with 310, Alabama with 117, and Florida with 114.

  So what animals and plants make up the ranks of the endangered or threatened? Some are likely familiar—such as the Florida panther, the Northern spotted owl, and the black-footed ferret. Others are likely not—such as Florida’s Ochlockonee moccasinshell mussel, the Mississippi gopher frog, and Hawaii’s Blackburn’s sphinx moth.

  Three animals—Oregon’s coho salmon, Alaska’s polar bear, and the “distinct population segment” of the gray wolf found in the northern Rocky Mountains—have been formally proposed for listing as threatened or endangered and may soon join the ranks. They will be listed if at least one of the following five criteria can be shown to exist: “the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of [a species’] habitat or range; over-utilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes; disease or predation; the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; or other natural or manmade factors affecting [the species’] continued existence.”

  But even as some species have been added to the list of endangered or threatened wildlife, others have been removed (or “delisted,” in enviro-legal parlance) for one of three reasons: they are already extinct, they have recovered, or the “original data for classification [for their listing was] in error.”

  To date, nine species have had the misfortune to be delisted because of extinction: the Guam broadbill (or “chuguangguang,” in the island’s native tongue); the longjaw cisco and the blue pike (two species fished to extinction in the Great Lakes); the Amistad gambusia (a small fish wiped out when its only home, Texas’s Goodenough Spring, was inundated by the Amistad Reservoir); the Mariana mallard (a large duck that once lived in the Pacific’s Marianas Archipelago); Sampson’s pearlymussel (a species of mussel once found in the Wabash and Ohio rivers); the Tecopa pupfish (shouldered out of existence in California by invasive foreign species); the Santa Barbara song sparrow (wiped out in a catastrophic fire on California’s Santa Barbara Island); and the dusky seaside sparrow (doomed by habitat loss in Florida in the 1960s and 1970s).

  Eighteen species (or population subsets of those species), however, have been delisted under far happier circumstances: They have been determined to have fully recovered to a point where the Endangered Species Act’s protections are no longer required. For the sake of fairness, however, it should be noted that some observers have wondered if some of those species were not really endangered in the first place.

  Regardless of such questions, the animal species found in the United States that have been deemed recovered and thus delisted are the American bald eagle; the Douglas County, Oregon, population of the Columbian white-tailed deer; the American alligator; the gray wolf; the Aleutian Canadian goose; the Arctic peregrine falcon; and the brown pelican populations found in Florida and Alabama. The delisted plant species are Robbins’ cinquefoil, Eggert’s sunflower, and Hoover’s woolly-star. Overseas, delisted species include the Palau ground dove, the Palau fantail flycatcher, the Eastern gray kangaroo, the red kangaroo, the Western gray kangaroo, the Tinian monarch, the Palau owl, and the gray whale.

  Closer to home, Idaho’s American peregrine falcon joined the list of delisted species in 1999. By then, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could tally 1,425 nesting pairs in the western United States, Alaska, and Canada, with additional pairs present in the eastern United States. By 2003, the service was able to count 3,005 pairs of falcons across the nation, providing compelling evidence th
at the falcon’s recovery was flourishing.

  The efforts of The Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey, based in Boise, Idaho, have played an important part in such recovery operations through its captivity breeding and release program. Today, Idaho alone is home to thirty-four pairs of falcons, which is only a fraction of the approximately captive-bred 1,500 pairs that can now be found nationwide, thanks, in large part, to The Peregrine Fund’s operations and efforts.

  It was only appropriate, therefore, that in early June 2007, as the first Idaho state quarters began to appear in Boise’s banks and cash registers, The Peregrine Fund released four new chicks at Camas Prairie. They joined seventeen other falcons that have been released at the site over the course of the past five years and, with any luck, will add to the falcon’s ongoing recovery in the Rocky Mountains and elsewhere.

  Esta Perpetua.

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  WYOMING

  All Things Being Equal . . .

  Surely no one needs an explanation of the iconic bucking bronco on Wyoming’s quarter. In fact, of the five final designs that culminated from 3,200 narrative design concepts submitted to the Wyoming Coinage Advisory Committee, four of them featured some version of the bucking horse image. In addition to the winning design, the other contenders were “Bucking Horse and Rider with State Outline”; “Bucking Horse and Rider with Teton Range”; “Bucking Horse and Rider in Typical Wyoming Scene” (a ranch); and “Yellowstone National Park—Old Faithful Geyser.”

  But the Equality State? Why does the quarter declare Wyoming to be the Equality State?

  The answer is deceptively simple. But as often happens, the devil is in the details. Arguably, the roots of that answer can be found in the 1820s, when the so-called mountain men first visited Wyoming’s towering mountain ranges and high plains in pursuit of fur. For such men, success or failure was a very personal calculus—a man rose or fell, succeeded or failed, lived or died by his skills and wits. In many ways, mountain men such as the Ireland-born Thomas Fitzpatrick and Jedediah Smith inculcated Wyoming with the idea of judging a man—or a woman—simply on his or her own merits. In the middle of the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of settlers traversed Wyoming en route to Oregon and California. The defiant independence of the region’s Indians, however, encouraged most of the pioneers to hurry along to points west. It was not until 1867 that a gold rush sparked large-scale settlement, an influx supported by the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad two years later.

  Like the mountain men before them, those gold prospectors came to Wyoming to succeed or fail on their own merits—and to find both equal protection and equal treatment under the law as they sought their fortunes and built such boomtowns as South Pass City (eventually renamed Sweetwater), Miners Delight, and Atlantic City. The same could be said of the ranchers, cattlemen, and cowboys who followed. Equally important, these men had a vested interest in ensuring the continued growth of Wyoming’s settlement, particularly in an age when so many other Western territories were competing for those same settlers.

  Perhaps it should have come as little surprise, therefore, that when Wyoming became a territory in 1868, saloon keeper William H. Bright introduced a bill calling for women’s suffrage in the territorial legislature the following year. Bright was, as fate would have it, not only a legislator but also the husband of a young wife who happened to be a devoted suffragette. He was also aware that legislatures in Washington, Nevada, and the Dakotas were considering similar bills—bills that, if passed, would be publicity coups for those population-hungry territories. Finally, and less admirably, he reasoned that if black suffrage (which he opposed) was irreversible, then he could not reconcile denying that same right to his wife in Sweetwater or his mother back home in Virginia.

  Council Bill 70, “an act to grant to the women of Wyoming Territory the right of suffrage and to hold office,” survived efforts to amend its language from “women” to “ladies” and to set the voting age for women at thirty. Passed by the legislature on December 10, 1869, it was signed into law by Governor John A. Campbell that same day. Campbell’s signature made history: Wyoming officially became the first state or territory to give women the right to vote.

  Within three months, the Wyoming Territory—and the nation— had its first female judge, Esther H. Morris, who was appointed by the governor to fill a justice of the peace seat in South Pass City vacated by James Stillman. When Stillman declined to surrender his docket to Morris, his refusal presented the new judge with the opportunity to preside over her first trial.

  Two decades later, when Wyoming became a state in 1890, it was still the only state to allow women the right to vote, even at the risk, at the time, of jeopardizing its application for statehood. It was not until 1920 that the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ensured that all (white) women in the United States enjoyed the same right. And even as the rest of the nation seemed to catch up with Wyoming’s ideals, the state surged forward on that front once again—this time in the form of Nellie Tayloe Ross.

  In 1924, Ross was Wyoming’s first lady, married to William B. Ross. Two years earlier, her husband, a Democrat, had scored a remarkable political coup in heavily Republican Wyoming by being elected governor. His victory, which rested on a broad appeal to progressives of both parties, capped years of almost quixotic runs for political office.

  Unfortunately, William Ross had little time to enjoy the laurels of his victory. On October 2, 1924, the governor died following complications from an appendectomy. The secretary of state, in his role as acting governor, called for a special election. The state’s Democratic Party quickly turned to Nellie Ross and pressed her to run for her deceased husband’s office to finish out the remaining two years of his term.

  After initially refusing the request, Ross acquiesced and allowed her name to be put on the ballot, although she still refused to actively campaign. Her opponent, attorney Eugene J. Sullivan, felt no such compunctions and, for his part, campaigned vigorously against Ross.

  Sullivan’s efforts were to no avail. On November 4, 1924, Wyoming’s voters handily elected Ross as their new governor. When she was inaugurated on January 5, 1925, she became the first female governor in the United States—beating out Texas’s Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (who was elected on the same day as Ross) for the inaugural honors by a scant sixteen days.

  During her term in office, Ross pursued her late husband’s political and social agenda—cutting taxes, seeking government assistance for poor farmers, pursuing banking reform, and advocating the strengthening of Prohibition laws. She also campaigned for Wyoming to ratify an ultimately unsuccessful constitutional amendment that would have prohibited child labor.

  Ross ran for reelection in 1926 but narrowly lost—a victim, in part, of increasing public pressure building against Prohibition and her continued hesitancy to campaign actively. Nevertheless, she remained active in politics. She campaigned for Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election and served as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.

  In the presidential election of 1932, Ross campaigned actively for Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the wake of his inauguration, Roosevelt appointed Ross as director of the U.S. Mint—another female first for Ross. She served for twenty years, making her the longest-serving director in the Mint’s history, and only left office when the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower claimed the White House in 1953.

  Ross remained in Washington, D.C., to live out the remainder of her days, paying a final visit to Wyoming in 1972 at age ninety-six. She died five years later at the age of 101. “One of the great women in American history died yesterday in Washington, D.C.,” the Wyoming Eagle declared.

  Admirers bestowed similar accolades on South Pass City’s Justice of the Peace Esther Morris, eventually calling her (rather hyperbolically) the “author of female suffrage.” In 1954, they even lobbied successfully for her statue to be placed in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, where she joined Shoshone Indian Chief Washakie as
one of Wyoming’s two representatives there.

  In the end, however, whether it was Morris or Bright who was the driving force behind Wyoming’s historic legislation is probably irrelevant. Their combined legacy is far more important and therefore rightly celebrated on the state quarter of Wyoming—the Equality State.

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  UTAH

  Utah Makes a Good Point

  On Utah’s state quarter, a sharp pike thrusts between two locomotives and drives home the point that, in 1869, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad Company completed the transcontinental railroad at Utah’s Promontory Point. And even though that particular spike and the rail that it once held fast have long since been torn up, the legacy of that same spike—and what it represented for the United States—is well worth recalling.

  From some of the earliest days of America’s western expansion, men dreamed of a transcontinental railroad—a railroad that, as the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Roads and Canals stated in 1850, would “cement the commercial, social, and political relations of the East and the West.” As support for the idea of the transcontinental railroad grew, the relevant questions shifted from “why” and “if ” to “where.” The route of the railroad would bring commerce, settlement, industry, and enterprise to previously empty quarters of the nation. In the case of those lands deprived of the railroad’s route, it would turn them into economic backwaters.

  Not surprisingly, the debate between the possible routes quickly bogged down along sectional lines. Southern states wanted a southern route; the North preferred the northern routes. It was not until the Civil War removed the Southern voices from the calculus that a decision on a route was reached.