Q. David Bowers
California Celebrates an Anniversary
The year 1925 represented the 75th anniversary of the admission of the State of California to the Union in 1850. Prior to statehood California had been explored and settled by the Spanish and had become a part of Mexico. Following termination of hostilities in the Mexican War, California was ceded to the United States for $15 million under terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The January 1848 discovery of gold by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill on the American River set the stage for the famous Gold Rush.
By the end of 1849 the white population of California had increased by tens of thou-sands of inhabitants, many of whom had come from the East by ship or overland by wagon. Following organizational activities in early autumn of that year, the state government began operation on December 20, 1849. The so-called Bear Flag, depicting a grizzly bear, was adopted and was taken from a design devised in 1846, when in the Bear Flag Revolt a group of Americaps seized the Presidio at Sonoma and forced the surrender of General Vallejo. Following an application filed on March 12, 1850, the Republic of California, as it was called, joined the Union on September 9th.
To celebrate the 75th anniversary occasion, the San Francisco Citizens' Committee (Angelo J. Rossi, chairman) formulated a proposal which eventually became part of the Act of February 24, 1925, a catch-all piece of legislation that authorized three commemorative half dollars: to observe the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Bennington and the independence of Vermont (an issue subsequently coined in 1927), the 75th anniversary of the admission of California into the Union, and the 100th anniversary of the founding of Fort Vancouver in the state of Washington. The Vermont proposal was modest, and only 40,000 half dollars were slated to be coined for that event. For the California and Fort Vancouver issues the authorized amounts were 300,000 coins in each instance.
The Design
Tapped to create the design of the California Jubilee half dollar was Joseph (Jo) Mora, a well-known sculptor who was born in Uruguay in 1876, and who in 1925 lived in Carmel, a popular California seaside resort. The artist devised motifs relating directly to California historical events of the 1850s. The obverse depicted a Gold Rush era prospector kneeling to the left, washing placer gold with a pan, whereas the reverse depicted the emblem of the state, a grizzly bear, as taken from the Bear Flag.
James Earle Fraser, representing the Commission of Fine Arts, took exception to the design, calling the whole thing "inexperienced and amateurish," and recommended that Chester Beach or Robert Aitken redo the work, possibly incorporating as the design "something which would be far more interesting and with a bigger sense of what California really is."
The San Francisco Citizens' Committee, which had the final say, wisely ignored Fraser's criticism, and the design became a reality. In the 1930s David M. Bullowa, who studied the commemorative series on behalf of the American Numismatic Society, paid Io Mora's design this tribute: "A very virile and well executed half dollar, in which obverse and reverse are definitely related to each other."
This interesting commentary appeared in B. Max Mehl's 1937 monograph, The Commemorative Coins of the United States: "This is my favorite coin because San Franciscois my favorite city (not that you give a damn). This beautiful coin was struck to commemorate the 75th anniversary of California being admitted into the Union (this coin should have been struck in gold). Obverse is a very fine piece of art work showing a miner washing gold. The reverse is a polar bear [sic], the emblem of California (why, I don't know). I have traveled and toured California from one end to the other and have never yet seen a "bear."
In his 1971 study, Numismatic Art in America, Cornelius Vermeule gave the design high praise, noting it is "one of America's greatest works of numismatic art. The design is bold and effective. The types are large, simple, worked out with folds of cloth for the miner's shirt and trousers, felt for his hat, leather for his boots. Muscles, bones, and tufts of fur express the massive determination of the bear. Within the limits of modern machine design, compositions such as this are about as much as can be expected of a die designer. To add to the boldness of the miner and the ursine companion, the field is unpolished, that is, it is left roughed as it appeared in the sculptor's model. Lettering is effective too, because large and very small sizes are used. Placing is so skillfully handled that it seems hard to realize all three required aphorisms, the statutory inscriptions, are included."
Today San Franciscans remember Jo Mora; if at all, not for his coin designs but for his sculptural group, Cervantes, in Golden Gate Park, showing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza worshipping a bust of their creator.