1/4 Dollar 'Washington Quarter' Hot Springs, Arkansas

Hot Springs was the first site designated under the 1832 federal reservation act that predated the National Park Service by over eight decades, making it the oldest federally protected natural area in the United States — a distinction the Park Service itself only formalized in 1921. Congress finally granted it full national park status that year, though locals had been treating the thermal bathhouses as a destination since the antebellum period. The quarter was the first of five released in 2010 under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program, which Congress authorized in 2008 to replace the 50 State Quarters series.