2011 America the Beautiful Glacier NP Silver 5 oz

2011 America the Beautiful Glacier National Park 5 Troy oz Silver copy of the circulating quarters.

Glacier National Park is named for its prominent glacier-carved terrain and remnant glaciers descended from the ice age of 10,000 years ago. Known to the Blackfeet as the "Backbone of the World," Glacier National Park preserves more than one million acres of forests, alpine meadows, lakes, rugged peaks and glacially carved valleys in the Northern Rocky Mountains. These lands were first set aside as a national reserve on February 22, 1897.

The reverse depicts a mountain goat standing on a rocky outcropping, which overlooks the northeast slope of Mount Reynolds. The design was created by Barbara Fox and sculpted by Charles L. Vickers.

When Congress authorized the America the Beautiful Quarters program they also directed the US Mint to issue an accompanying Silver Bullion Coin. The Mint was directed to produce a 5 Troy oz 999 fine coin with a diameter of 3" and with the weight and fineness imprinted (incused) around the edge.

This caused many problems, the first attempts to produce these coins were failures, as the coin was too thin and when the lettering around the edge was struck the coins folded over. By the time the Mint had solved the technical problems the coins could not be distributed until late in 2010.