White Mountain National Forest

White Mountain National Forest is a broad forest located in the state of New Hampshire, in the northeastern United States. Part of it extends into neighboring Maine, and with its rugged peaks, deep valleys, waterfalls, and hiking trails, it is counted among the natural attractions that people of the New England region enjoy visiting in every season.

The reverse of the coin depicts birch trees standing in the foreground, with Mount Chocorua rising beyond them. The white-barked birches and the sharply rising peak come together to compress the region’s distinctively clear and tidy forest scenery into a single scene.

Mount Chocorua is a particularly beloved peak even within the White Mountains, an iconic mountain that painters and photographers have loved to capture. The birches in the foreground are trees that represent this region’s forest, changing color with each season as they embrace the mountain. The charm of this design is that it captures not one grand mountain but a landscape formed by mountain and forest together.

White Mountain National Forest was designated on May 16, 1918. At a time when reckless logging was damaging the forest, it began to be protected as a national forest in order to guard and restore the water and the woods. Today it has become one of the largest national forests in New England.

This coin in the America the Beautiful series quietly reminds us how precious a single forest landscape cherished by local people can be, even if it is not a famous peak of a great mountain range.