Old Spanish Trail half dollar

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Old Spanish Trail half dollar

United States

Value 50 cents (0.50 US dollars)

Mass 12.5 g

Diameter 30.61 mm

Thickness 2.15 mm (0.08 in)

Edge Reeded

90.0% silver
Composition
10.0% copper

Silver 0.36169 troy oz

Years of minting 1935

Mintage 10,000 with 8 pieces for the Assay Commission

Mint marks None, all pieces struck at the Philadelphia

Mint without mint mark

Obverse
 Design The head of a cow

Designer L. W. Hoffecker

Design date 1935

Reverse

Design Yucca plant superimposed on map of the Gulf Coast

states.

Designer L. W. Hoffecker

Design date 1935

The Old Spanish Trail half dollar is a commemorative coin struck by the United

States Bureau of the Mint in 1935. The coin was designed by L. W. Hoffecker, a coin
dealer, who also was in charge of its distribution.
In 1930, President Herbert Hoover vetoed the Gadsden Purchase half dollar bill.
Hoffecker had been the moving force behind that bid, and he sought another
commemorative coin proposal that he could control if authorizing legislation was
passed. He chose the travels of Spanish officer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in the
early 16th century. Hoffecker took liberties both with the timing of Cabeza de Vaca's
travels and their location; though Hoffecker's hometown of El Paso, Texas, is
featured on the coin, Cabeza de Vaca came nowhere near its site. All this made little
difference to Congress, which passed the Old Spanish Trail coin bill without
opposition, and it was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Once they were struck, Hoffecker purchased the coins from the government and sold
them to collectors, ostensibly on behalf of the local museum, but in fact for his
personal profit, something he later denied in testimony before Congress. There were
no complaints about the distribution printed in the pages of The Numismatist (a
journal on coin collecting) and Hoffecker went on to the presidency of the American
Numismatic Association in 1939. Hoffecker's design for the coin, featuring the head
of a cow, has brought mixed reviews from numismatic commentators. The fact that
only 10,000 of the half dollars were struck has made them prized among those
 seeking to complete a "type set" of early commemorative coins, that is one coin of
each different design.
Contents

 1Background

 2Legislation

 3Preparation

 4Design

 5Production and distribution

 6References

 7Sources

 8External links

Background[edit]

Map showing Cabeza de Vaca's route

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was an officer on a Spanish expedition that landed

around Tampa Bay in 1528. Their searches for treasure led to hostile reception by
the local Native Americans, and de Vaca was eventually marooned there. He and
others made their way west by small boats along the coast, and eventually
reached Galveston Island, where he lived with the Karankawa tribe as a medicine
man before continuing west overland: in 1536 he found a Spanish patrol in northern
Mexico. He returned home and wrote of his experiences. [1] Cabeza de Vaca, or "head
of a cow", was a name said to have been given by the King of Spain to an ancestor
of Álvar Núñez for his help in guiding the army through the mountains, enabling an
attack on the Moors from the rear, defeating them. [2]
In the 1930s, commemorative coins were not sold by the government—Congress, in
authorizing legislation, usually designated an organization which had the exclusive
right to purchase them at face value and vend them to the public at a premium. [3] In
the case of the Old Spanish Trail half dollar, the responsible group was the El Paso
Museum, acting through its chairman. [4]
Hoffecker was elected ANA president in 1939.

Lyman William Hoffecker (usually known as L. W. Hoffecker) was an El Paso,
Texas coin dealer and an official of the American Numismatic Association (ANA).[5] In
1929, he organized the Gadsden Purchase Commission (consisting mostly of
himself) to seek a commemorative coin issue for the 75th anniversary of
the Gadsden Purchase. A bill that would have authorized one passed both houses of
Congress in 1930, but it was vetoed by President Herbert Hoover, who deemed
commemorative coins abusive. Undiscouraged by this, in 1935 Hoffecker made a
second attempt for a commemorative coin issue he would control, for the Old
Spanish Trail, becoming chairman of the El Paso Museum Coin Committee. This
time, he visited Washington and had discussions with several lawmakers, and was
even granted a five-minute interview with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a talk
Hoffecker said "that saved us".[6] Hoffecker later testified before Congress that he
was asked to handle the arrangements of the Old Spanish Trail half dollar as the
only coin collector in El Paso, something Q. David Bowers, in his volume on
commemoratives, called a lie, as Hoffecker elsewhere in his correspondence refers
to local collectors buying a few of the