Oregon Trail Memorial Half Dollar - Initial Release

Initial Release

According to Webber, "during the final stages of manufacture, kept heckling the mint to 'hurry up' ". The Philadelphia Mint struck 48,000 pieces in September 1926, plus 30 reserved for inspection by the 1927 United States Assay Commission. They sold quite well; Meeker peddled them along his route at $1 each. The difference between the face value and the sale price was to pay the cost for historical markers along the Trail, and to renovate the Whitman Mission in Washington state. The 1926 piece was later dubbed by the Association the "Ezra Meeker Issue".

With the initial quantity sold out (75 pieces were returned to the mint, most likely because they were damaged or misstruck), the Association requested that more pieces be produced. A hundred thousand were coined at the San Francisco Mint in October and November, bearing the mint mark S (1926-S). The Oregon Trail Memorial half dollar thus became the first commemorative coin struck at multiple mints; Bowers notes that this set "a precedent which would be expanded and abused in the years to come". According to Swiatek and Breen, "the Association ... expecting that the collectors who bought 1926 Philadelphia coins would turn out in similar or greater numbers for the second variety". Although a few thousand quickly sold, the market for the half dollars proved saturated, and tens of thousands remained at the mint pending payment. On December 29, 1926, Meeker celebrated his 96th birthday in New York; he was presented with 96 Oregon Trail Memorial half dollars by the Association.

Despite the many unsold 1926-S half dollars still in the government's hands, the Association sought the issuance of 1927-dated half dollars; this was refused by the Treasury Department (of which the Bureau of the Mint was a part) due to the backlog. In 1928, however, 50,000 more were struck at the Philadelphia Mint. The Treasury refused to release these coins until all of the 1926-S pieces were paid for. This did not hinder Meeker's exploits: he was presented with 97 coins on his birthday in December 1927 by the Association and brought his half dollars to the visitor's gallery of the New York Stock Exchange, though he was refused permission to go onto the floor. He began another transcontinental journey in August 1928 from Atlantic City, New Jersey, this one by a motorized wagon provided by the Ford Motor Company, selling half dollars along the way. Meeker was forced to break off the journey due to illness in Detroit, almost dying there. He was able to return home, disgruntled at having missed voting in the election (he supported the successful Republican candidate, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, for president) for the first time since 1853. At his home in Washington state, Meeker again became ill in November, and died December 3, 1928, three and a half weeks before his 98th birthday. He was buried in a cemetery in his adopted home town of Puyallup, a place he had helped settle. Meeker's headstone bears a plaque reproducing the wagon side of the half dollar.