1 Dollar - City of North Bend North Bend, Oregon

North Bend issued these myrtlewood pieces in 1933 when the city simply ran out of federal currency — a direct consequence of the banking crisis that followed Roosevelt's emergency bank closures in March of that year. The local scrip was authorized by the city council as emergency legal tender for municipal transactions, and myrtlewood was chosen partly for its regional availability and partly because the dense, figured grain made the tokens genuinely difficult to counterfeit by hand.

North Bend was not alone — neighboring Coos Bay issued its own myrtlewood currency the same year — but the North Bend pieces are the scarcer of the two.