2022 American Innovation $1 coin designs
The New Dollar Coin Designs
The coin designs for the American Innovation $1 Coin program for 2022 have been released, and the coins are set to be put into circulation throughout next year (2022).
The American Innovation $1 Coins honor and represent invention and innovation across the United States. Each coin represents one of the 50 states, as well as the U.S. Territories: Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana islands, and the District of Columbia.
2022’s American Innovation coins will feature the states Rhode Island, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The program releases the coins in the order that the states ratified the Constitution, or were admitted into the Union, and then will be followed by the District of Columbia, and finally the territories.
Rhode Island American Innovation $1 Coin
The Reliance Yacht at the start of a race.
This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID det.4a15409.
The Rhode Island dollar coin recognizes the groundbreaking technical innovations of the Reliance Yacht, built in 1891 by naval architect Nathanael Herreshoff.
The Reliance was built for the America’s Cup sailing competition, and the yacht was founded by nine members of the New York Yacht Club, headed by Cornelius Vanderbilt III.
The Reliance had a brief but extremely successful racing career, and was undefeated before she was sold for scrap in 1913.
Rhode Island Dollar Coin Design
Designer: Dennis Friel (Artistic Infusion Program)
Sculptor: Phebe Hemphill
Reverse Design of the 2022 Rhode Island American Innovation $1 Coin.
United States Mint Image.
The Rhode Island $1 American Innovation coin depicts the Reliance Yacht, gliding through the waters surrounding Rhode Island at full speed. The design is bordered by a rope, which sets the nautical theme even further.
Vermont American Innovation $1 Coin
A snowboarder doing an aerial trick
The Vermont American Innovation $1 Coin celebrates the birth of snowboarding. In 1977, Jake Burton started a company that would become the
world’s largest snowboard company--and the most iconic brand in the industry--in a barn in South Londonderry, Vermont.
Stratton was the first mountain resort to open up their slopes to snowboarders in 1983, and later became the location for the U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships, which is now one of the biggest events in the snowboarding world.
In addition to being the first resort to allow snowboarders, the half-pipe terrain feature (borrowed from skateboarding) was developed in Vermont at Stratton.
Vermont Dollar Coin Design
Designer: Justin Kunz (Artistic Infusion Program)
Sculptor: Craig Campbell
Reverse design of the 2022 Vermont American Innovation $1 Coin.
United States Mint Image.
The design for the Vermont dollar coin features a female snowboarder, going down a mountain and doing a trick called a “melon grab”. Behind her is a snowy mountain skyline, and trees covered in fluffy white snow.
Kentucky American Innovation $1 Coin
Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys.
(Left to right) Chubby Wise, Lester Flatt, Stringbean (David Akeman), Bill Monroe (seated), Andy Boyett, Sally Forrester, ca. 1945, Courtesy Smithsonian Institution and Country Music Foundation Library Media Center, Nashville, Tennessee
The Kentucky American Innovation $1 coin pays homage to the invention of Bluegrass music, which the genre derives its name from the band “Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys”. Dubbed the original Bluegrass band, they actually named themselves the Bluegrass Boys after Monroe’s home state of Kentucky, because of the Kentucky Bluegrass that grows so abundantly.
Bluegrass music developed all around the region and in the Appalachians in the 1940s, and consists largely of acoustic stringed instruments, such as guitars, and banjos.
Kentucky Dollar Coin Design
Designer: Christina Hess
Sculptor: Renata Gordon
Reverse design of the 2022 Kentucky American Innovation $1 Coin.
United States Mint Image.
The design for the Kentucky dollar coin shows a banjo, slightly tilted to the side representing the rhythm and movement of Bluegrass music. The words “KENTUCKY” and “Bluegrass” are right on the front of the coin laid over the banjo, and “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” are around the edge of the coin, above the banjo.
Tennessee American Innovation $1 Coin
A dam being built, thanks to the Tennessee Valley Authority, in 1942
CREDIT: Palmer, Alfred T., photographer. "Early stages of construction work at the TVA's Douglas Dam, Tenn." June 1942. America from the Great Depression to World War II: Color Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1939-1945, Library of Congress.
The Tennessee American Innovation $1 Coin recognizes the innovation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which was created by Congress in 1933 to construct transmission lines to serve “farms and small villages that are not otherwise supplied with electricity at reasonable rates”.
Most houses in rural tennessee at this time did not have electricity, in fact as much as nine out of ten rural houses were not hooked up to an electrical grid all the way into the late 1930s.
The TVA also built 16 hydro-electric dams between 1933 and 1944, and Tennessee very quickly became the nation's largest public utility supplier.
Tennessee Dollar Coin Design
Designer: Matt Swaim
Sculptor: Joseph Menna
Reverse design of the 2022 Tennessee American Innovation $1 Coin.
United States Mint Image.
The design for the Tennessee dollar coin depicts a rural farm in Tennessee, with rolling hills behind the farm, and cultivated farmland surrounding the farm in the foreground, the road is lined with newly installed power lines supplying much needed electricity to the Tennessee Valley.
