NOVEMBER 13
2018•Block Island National Wildlife Refuge Quarter
2008•Martin Van Buren Presidential $1
2025•Wonder Woman Coin & Medals Released
The Block Island National Wildlife Refuge Quarter Is Released
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On November 13, 2018, the United States Mint officially released the Block Island National Wildlife Refuge quarter, the fifth and final America the Beautiful quarter of the year and the 45th design in the 56-coin national program. The Rhode Island coin featured one of the program’s most atmospheric wildlife scenes: a black-crowned night-heron flying above Cow Cove, with Sandy Point and the historic North Light lighthouse in the distance.
The release brought a small, ecologically important island refuge into the pockets and collections of Americans across the country. Block Island National Wildlife Refuge lies about 12 miles off Rhode Island’s southern coast and is especially important as a stopover for migratory birds traveling the Atlantic Flyway.
November 13 was the Mint’s official release date and the date bags and rolls went on sale. Two days later, on November 15, the Mint and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service held the ceremonial Rhode Island launch. Those were separate events, an important distinction in tracing the coin’s history.
The 45th America the Beautiful Quarter
The Block Island quarter was part of the America the Beautiful Quarters Program, the ambitious successor to the enormously popular 50 State Quarters initiative.
Congress authorized the program through the America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act of 2008. Beginning in 2010, the Mint issued quarters honoring a national park or other national site in each state, the District of Columbia, and the five U.S. territories.
The sites appeared in the order in which they were first established as federally protected national locations.
Five new designs generally appeared each year. The program ultimately encompassed 56 sites and concluded in 2021 with the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site quarter.
Block Island represented Rhode Island and occupied position number 45.
The Five Quarters of 2018
Block Island completed the ninth year of the America the Beautiful program.
The five 2018 sites were Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin, Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia, and Block Island National Wildlife Refuge in Rhode Island.
Each presented a very different American landscape.
Pictured Rocks showed Chapel Rock and its white pine. Apostle Islands featured sea caves, a lighthouse, and a kayaker. Voyageurs depicted a common loon. Cumberland Island showed a snowy egret in a salt marsh. Block Island closed the year with a black-crowned night-heron over the Rhode Island coast.
Wildlife played an unusually strong role in the year’s designs.
Block Island is separated from the Rhode Island mainland by the waters of Block Island Sound and the Atlantic.
The National Wildlife Refuge occupies 133 acres and was established in 1973. Though small compared with many national parks represented in the quarter program, its ecological importance is much greater than its acreage might suggest.
The island lies along the Atlantic Flyway, one of North America’s great migratory bird routes.
Birds moving along the coast can use Block Island as a critical resting and feeding point. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notes that more than 70 species of migratory songbirds may concentrate there during the fall.
For young birds that overshoot the mainland during migration, the island can become an especially valuable stopover before they continue their journey.
The refuge was established for its value to the national migratory bird management program.
Its habitats include coastal shrublands, beaches, dunes, and other environments that provide food, shelter, nesting areas, and resting places for wildlife.
The island supports threatened and endangered species as well. Piping plovers breed on Block Island, and the American burying beetle has also been part of conservation efforts there.
For the quarter program, this gave the Mint a challenge. A single coin had to represent not merely a scenic place but the ecological purpose that made the refuge nationally significant.
The chosen design solved that problem by making a bird the dominant subject.
The Black-Crowned Night-Heron
The reverse shows a black-crowned night-heron in flight.
The species is a compact, stocky heron found in wetland environments across much of the world. Adults are recognizable by their black crown and back, pale gray wings, and distinctive red eyes.
Unlike the tall, long-necked silhouette many people associate with herons, the black-crowned night-heron often appears hunched when at rest.
Its inclusion immediately communicates that Block Island is a wildlife refuge rather than simply a scenic coastal destination.
The bird also gives the coin motion. It flies across the composition while the landscape and lighthouse remain fixed below.
The landscape is based on a view from the beach at Cow Cove looking toward Sandy Point.
In the background stands Block Island’s North Light.
The lighthouse gives the design a human historical element without overwhelming the refuge theme. It also makes the scene geographically distinctive. A flying heron alone could represent many coastal refuges; the lighthouse and shoreline help identify this as Block Island.
The result is one of the America the Beautiful program’s more narrative compositions: bird, sea, beach, headland, and lighthouse combine into a miniature coastal panorama.
The reverse was designed by Chris Costello of the U.S. Mint’s Artistic Infusion Program.
The Artistic Infusion Program brings outside artists into the federal coin and medal design process, supplementing the work of the Mint’s staff medallic artists.
Costello’s design was sculpted by Mint Medallic Artist Phebe Hemphill.
That designer-sculptor partnership is common in modern U.S. coinage. The artist creates the approved concept, while the sculptor translates it into the relief and technical form necessary for coin production.
The inscriptions read “BLOCK ISLAND,” “RHODE ISLAND,” “2018,” and “E PLURIBUS UNUM.”
Washington Remained on the Obverse
Like the other America the Beautiful quarters, the Block Island coin used the familiar George Washington portrait derived from John Flanagan’s 1932 quarter design.
For the national parks program, the Mint restored details of Flanagan’s portrait while rearranging inscriptions to accommodate the changing reverses.
The obverse inscriptions are “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” “LIBERTY,” “IN GOD WE TRUST,” and “QUARTER DOLLAR.”
That arrangement allowed the reverse to devote nearly all of its space to the featured national site.
For collectors, the consistent Washington obverse tied 56 different landscapes and historical locations into one coherent series.
The U.S. Mint’s historical timeline records November 13, 2018 as the release date of the Block Island National Wildlife Refuge quarter.
At noon Eastern Time that day, the Mint also began selling rolls and 100-coin bags containing the new quarters.
Products were available with coins from Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco.
Philadelphia and Denver pieces were the versions intended for ordinary circulation. San Francisco “S” quarters were produced for numismatic sales and were not released into general circulation.
The Mint offered P- and D-mint 100-coin bags for $34.95 each, an S-mint bag at the same price, a two-roll P/D set for $32.95, an S-mint roll for $18.95, and a three-roll P/D/S set for $46.95.
The Block Island issue demonstrates how one modern quarter design can exist in several different forms.
Philadelphia and Denver produced clad quarters for circulation. San Francisco produced collector versions. Proof examples also appeared in annual sets, and silver proof versions were available to collectors.
The Mint additionally produced a five-ounce silver coin carrying the same basic design.
That large-format piece measured three inches in diameter and contained five troy ounces of .999 fine silver.
Thus the tiny heron-and-lighthouse scene could be encountered both on an everyday 25-cent piece and on a massive collector coin with dramatically more room for detail.
The Five-Ounce Version
The America the Beautiful five-ounce silver coins were one of the most unusual extensions of the quarter program.
They reproduced the quarter designs at a diameter of three inches, dwarfing ordinary circulating coins.
The Block Island five-ounce uncirculated collector coin went on sale November 15, the same date as the ceremonial quarter launch, with a maximum potential mintage of 20,000 pieces.
These large silver pieces allowed collectors to appreciate details that can be difficult to see on a standard quarter, including feathers, shoreline textures, architectural elements, and subtle relief transitions.
They also connected the circulating-quarter program to the bullion and precious-metal collecting markets.
Two days after the official November 13 release, the Mint held a public launch ceremony at the Kettle Pond Visitor Center in Charlestown, Rhode Island.
U.S. Mint Director David J. Ryder joined representatives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Rhode Island government.
Designer Chris Costello attended, and local students, a high school choir, and Boy Scouts participated.
The ceremony included the traditional ceremonial coin pour and a public coin exchange. Washington Trust Bank exchanged $12,000 in Block Island quarters at the event.
The Mint reported that approximately 325 people attended despite cold weather and an approaching storm, including about 100 students.
Modern coin releases often have multiple legitimate dates associated with them.
A design may be unveiled months before production. Collector products may go on sale on one date. Circulating coins may begin distribution on another. A formal launch ceremony may happen days or weeks later.
For Block Island, November 13 is the Mint’s official release date and the start of bag-and-roll sales.
November 15 is the ceremonial launch in Rhode Island.
Both are historically meaningful, but they describe different events.
This calendar uses November 13 because that is the date the U.S. Mint itself records for the quarter’s release.
The America the Beautiful Program as a National Tour
By 2018, Americans had already encountered nearly a decade of changing national-site quarters.
The series had traveled from Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon to battlefields, forests, monuments, historic sites, wildlife refuges, and cultural landmarks.
The program turned the reverse of the quarter into a rotating national gallery.
For many people, a coin might provide their first introduction to a place they had never visited—or even heard of.
Block Island National Wildlife Refuge illustrates that educational function particularly well. It is far less universally known than Yellowstone or Grand Canyon, yet millions of quarters could carry its name far beyond Rhode Island.
Coins traditionally commemorate political leaders, national symbols, military events, and anniversaries.
The America the Beautiful program broadened that language by repeatedly making landscapes and conservation subjects the center of circulating money.
Block Island’s design is almost entirely environmental.
There is no human portrait on the reverse. The primary subject is a bird. The setting is a protected coastline. The lighthouse is a distant landmark rather than the dominant image.
The coin asks viewers to see wildlife habitat itself as part of the nation’s heritage.
The island’s geographic position is central to its ecological significance.
Bird migration is an enormous seasonal movement, but individual birds depend on a chain of suitable habitats along their routes.
An island stopover can provide food and rest during a demanding journey.
The Fish and Wildlife Service describes Block Island as internationally recognized for migratory bird habitat. During fall migration, concentrations of songbirds can attract birdwatchers from well beyond Rhode Island.
That makes the quarter’s flying heron more than a decorative choice. Flight is the ecological story of the refuge.
Rhode Island on a National Coin
Rhode Island had already appeared in the 50 State Quarters Program in 2001.
That earlier coin featured a sailboat on Narragansett Bay and the Pell Bridge, emphasizing the state’s maritime identity and “Ocean State” character.
The 2018 Block Island quarter returned to Rhode Island’s coastal environment but from a different perspective.
Instead of sailing and transportation, the focus was conservation and wildlife.
Together, the two quarters show how a single state can be represented through different stories: one cultural and maritime, the other ecological.
As the 45th of 56 designs, Block Island appeared when the America the Beautiful series was well into its final years.
Collectors who began in 2010 had already followed dozens of changing reverses. The program’s end was visible on the horizon.
Yet important innovations were still ahead.
In 2019, the Mint would place “W” mintmarked quarters from West Point directly into circulation for the first time, creating a nationwide modern treasure hunt.
The series would continue through 2021 before giving way to new quarter programs.
Block Island therefore belongs to the mature phase of one of the largest circulating commemorative-style programs in U.S. history.
November 13, 2018 brought a tiny Rhode Island wildlife refuge onto a national stage.
The new quarter carried a black-crowned night-heron across its reverse, flying above Cow Cove toward Sandy Point while North Light stood in the background.
It was the fifth and final America the Beautiful quarter of 2018, the 45th coin in the overall program, and another example of circulating money functioning as miniature public art.
The design connected everyday commerce with wildlife migration, coastal conservation, lighthouse history, and one of the smallest states in the Union.
Two days later, Rhode Islanders would gather for the ceremonial launch. But November 13 was the official release—the day the Block Island National Wildlife Refuge quarter entered the Mint’s national coinage story.
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