Shawnee National Forest
An Illinois forest featuring a camel-shaped rock and a red-tailed hawk flying overhead.
Shawnee National Forest is a vast forest located at the southern tip of Illinois in the American Midwest. With its gentle hills, strange rock formations, and continuous oak and hickory woods, this place preserves a wild landscape rarely seen in Illinois, which has many flat cornfields, and so people come here to walk in nature and rest.
On the reverse of the coin are engraved a rock called ‘Camel Rock,’ the natural vegetation, and a red-tailed hawk flying above it. Camel Rock is a sandstone formation that, worn away by wind and rain over long years, has come to look like a crouching camel, and it is a landmark representing Shawnee Forest.
The fact that the long passage of time has shaped a single rock into such a distinctive form shows well how patient a sculptor nature is. The red-tailed hawk circling the sky tells us that this forest is still a living home of the wild.
Shawnee National Forest was designated a national forest on September 6, 1939, and thus began to receive the nation’s protection. Efforts to restore land worn out by clearing and erosion and to protect the forest have led to today’s landscape.
This coin, one of the ‘America the Beautiful’ series, lets you encounter the hidden nature of Illinois through a small picture in the palm of your hand.