01
The road
The paired center lines turn toward the distant portal.
Blue Ridge
Parkway
A designed passage through the mountain.
A curving road, masonry portal and foreground flower organize North Carolina’s issue. Infrastructure is the route into this landscape.
Read the reverse ⟶DenominationQuarter dollar
Weight5 troy ounces
Fineness99.9% silver
Diameter76.2 mm
Mint markNone · bullion
IssuerUnited States Mint
Reverse design anatomy
Curve, opening
and near detail
The Mint identifies a road curving around a mountain and North Carolina’s state flower. The visible tunnel portals and masonry make the designed route explicit; no exact tunnel name is asserted.
The following close reading describes visible forms. It does not assign undocumented intentions to the artists.
02
The masonry
Blocks frame the tunnel opening on the left.
03
The flower
The large foreground flower is the Mint-identified state flower, not a scale model beside the road.
The place behind the coin
A public work
built over decades
NPS records the start of Parkway construction in 1935. Private contractors and New Deal work programs contributed to the project; the road was not built by one worker group in a single campaign.
The final link at Grandfather Mountain completed the continuous route in 1987. That engineering history provides context, but the coin’s tunnel scene is not identified here as the Linn Cove Viaduct.
- 1935Construction begins
- 1987Continuous route completed
- 2015Coin issued
Historical context, not a reconstruction. No unverified event photograph is used.
Same design. A larger canvas.
From pocket change
to a statement in silver
The 2015 design also belongs to the circulating quarter. At 76.2 mm, the five-ounce silver coin is 3.14 times wider by diameter—not 3.14 times heavier.
The quarter is a measured outline: an exact authorized quarter photograph is not bound for this page. It is not a miniature bullion image.
Collect with context
Know the design.
Know the object.
Reverse designer Frank Morris · reverse sculptor Joseph Menna
- Standard bullion
- No mint mark · Authorized Purchasers · incuse edge weight and fineness.
- Collector five-ounce
- P mint mark · special finish · a separate object. Collector totals are not bullion mintages.