Silver Five Ounces 2012 Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Coin from United States - detailed information

This coin is part of the America the Beautiful silver bullion coins (abbreviated ATB) - a series of 56 silver bullion coins with a face value of a quarter dollar. The coins in the series contain 5oz (five troy ounces) of silver, making them the largest silver bullion coins issued to date by the United States Mint. The design of the coins duplicates exactly - though much enlarged - each of the America the Beautiful quarters. They were issued from 2010 to 2021.

All coins in the series feature a common obverse depicting George Washington in a restored version of the portrait created by John Flanagan for the 1932 Washington quarter, while the reverses feature five individual designs for each year of the program (one in 2021), each depicting a national park or national site - one from each state, federal district, and territory.

The Chaco Culture National Historical Park quarter design is the second to be released in 2012 and the twelfth overall in the America the Beautiful Quarters Program; it was released on 2 April 2012 and represents the state of New Mexico.

This historical park in New Mexico features Chaco Canyon, which was a major centre of Puebloan culture between A.D. 850 and 1250. The Chacoan sites are part of the homeland of Pueblo Indian peoples of New Mexico, the Hopi Indians of Arizona and the Navajo Indians of the southwest. Chaco Canyon was the cultural centre of a system of communities linked by road and trading networks across a 40,000 square-mile region in the Four Corners area from A.D. 850 to 1150. Chaco is remarkable for its multi-storied public buildings called “great houses", enormous circular ceremonial subterranean structures called “great kivas", and distinctive architecture featuring a notable concentration of petroglyphs and pictographs. The Chacoan people combined pre-planned architectural designs, astronomical alignments, geometry, landscaping and engineering to create an ancient urban centre of spectacular public architecture. It was first established as a national site on March 11, 1907 (35 Stat. 2119).