2019 Lowell Nat'l Historical Park - West Point - NGC 64

2019 Lowell National Historical Park Quarter Massachusetts

Forty-Sixth in the America the Beautiful Quarters Collection

Lowell National Historical Park was established in 1978 in Lowell, Massachusetts, which lies at the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers about 30 miles north of Boston. During the Industrial Revolution that swept across America in the early 1800’s, Lowell became the manufacturing center of the New England textile industry. The park preserves cotton mills and other sites associated with Lowell’s unique place in the thriving pre-Civil War economy.

One of Lowell’s most interesting aspects was the “mill girls,” the young women who were at the core of the mills’ ability to mass-produce goods. Although they received cash wages and were given lodging in safe boardinghouses, the women worked long hours in dangerous conditions; in response, they formed the first union of working women in the United States and demanded better pay and a safer work environment. They also supported abolition, despite the fact that slavery was essential to the supply of cotton prior to the Civil War, and embraced education for all girls.

The reverse of the 2019 Lowell National Historical Park Quarter features a mill girl working at a power loom in one of Lowell’s cotton mills. The background highlights the Lowell skyline, including the Boott Mill clock tower.

The design was selected from among 18 suggestions created by U.S. Mint artists, most of which showed mill girls in various stages of the textile production process. Most of the remaining designs included symbols of the textile industry, such as cotton plants and threaded bobbins and spindles that were essential elements of the mill machinery.

2019 Lowell Nat'l Historical Park - West Point - NGC 64