Fort McHenry America the Beautiful Quarter

Issued as the fourth United States Mint America the Beautiful Quarters™ Program coin for 2013 will be the 2013 Fort McHenry America the Beautiful Quarter. It will be the nineteenth coin in the program which debuted in 2010.

The Fort McHenry quarter should appear in circulation in the fall of 2013, but unfortunately the design of this quarter will not be known until probably the first part of that year. This is because the Mint typically releases the final design for the five quarters minted that year together and only shortly before the first coin enters circulation.

Coins honoring the New Hampshire White Mountain National Forest, the Ohio Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial and the Nevada Great Basin National Park will precede the Fort McHenry coin in 2013. It will be followed by the South Dakota Mount Rushmore National Memorial Quarter later that year.

Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine in Maryland

Fort McHenry, located in Maryland, is best known today for the role it played in the creation of perhaps the country’s most famous song, the national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Written as a poem by Francis Scott Key, the song recalls the 25-hour bombardment of the fort by British war ships during the War of 1812. The US forces within the fort were able to fend of the British despite having inferior weapons and prevented the Baltimore Harbor from being invaded.

The fort was originally designed in 1798 and was named after surgeon-soldier James McHenry, a Scot-Irish immigrant who served as the Secretary of War under the first President of the United States George Washington.

In the years since the War of 1812, the area has seen many different uses including a prison during the American Civil War, a hospital during World War I and a Coast Guard Base during World War II. Virtually no signs of these facilities remain today, with the fort still closely resembling the structure as it was during the War of 1812.

Today, an estimated three quarters of a million people visit the fort annually.