Arkansas Centennial Half Dollar

The Arkansas half dollar is a good example of a worthy project discredited through greed and poor management.  Although this issue was the product of a state-sanctioned committee, this group’s actions were more in character for racketeers.  That the design of this coin was something less than an artistic success only added to the controversy.  Still, time has a way of healing old wounds, and coin collectors today seek the halves of this type as avidly as any others in the U. S. commemorative series.

  The first Europeans to enter what is now Arkansas were led by Hernando de Soto of Spain, who explored the area in 1541-42 but evidentally found no reason to remain.  More than a century later, Frenchmen Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet passed through Arkansas while canoeing down the Mississippi River in 1673.  They too moved on, but were followed a few years later by Robert La Salle.  It was his lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, who established a trading post along the river in 1683 for exchanges with the native Quapaw.  Through warfare, often in distant lands, Arkansas passed from France to Spain and then back to France again.  It was ultimately sold to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.  Arkansas was included within the Missouri Territory from 1812 to 1819, but when Missouri achieved statehood, the Arkansas Territory was established.  By 1836, enough settlers were living there for it to be admitted to the Union on June 15 as the 25th state.  Siding with the Confederacy during the Civil War, Arkansas was not readmitted to the Union until 1868, three years after the war’s end.