Let’s face it—$12.50 doesn’t get an American traveler very far. That paltry sum will buy about four and a half miles in a New York City cab during rush hour. If you purchase your ticket via the Internet, $12.50 will get you from New York to Philadelphia on a Greyhound bus. It is just enough to pay the toll—one way—across and through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

In short, $12.50 just does not buy you a whole lot of mileage these days—unless, that is, you happen to be the United States Mint. This year, as the Mint concludes its wildly successful 50 State Quarters Program® with its last three quarters (Arizona, Alaska, and, finally, Hawaii), it will have, with a handful of coins, placed an array of transportation options in the hands of 304 million Americans.

Consider the horse, for example. The series of state quarters began in 1998 with Delaware and a commemoration of a gentleman destined to become one of America’s most important business travelers—Caesar Rodney. Rodney was one of Delaware’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress; Delaware’s coin depicts Rodney on horseback as he races to Philadelphia the night of July 1–2, 1776, to vote to declare independence.

As the series of coins progressed, other states eventually offered up images of horses: the Thoroughbred pictured on Kentucky’s coin, the trio of mustangs galloping across Nevada’s quarter, and the bucking bronco of Wyoming’s coin. Not to be outdone, Nebraska added oxen to the mix, depicting a pair pulling a covered wagon past famed Chimney Rock on the state’s quarter.

Eventually, the automobile offered Americans a speedier travel option, and it is difficult to think of a more iconic symbol of automotive speed than the Indy 500. Indiana’s coin displays an Indy car and the slogan “Crossroads of America.” But with the typical racer at the Indianapolis 500 only garnering two miles per gallon, one shouldn’t discount Caesar Rodney’s choice of steed—or even the pioneers’ team of oxen—too quickly.

If fuel costs are an issue, then it’s hard to beat one of the original “green” energy options—good old-fashioned muscle power. As New Jersey’s coin reminds us, George Washington relied on that very thing to oar the ragged remnants of the Continental Army across the Delaware River from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to attack the Hessians at Trenton. So did famed explorers Lewis and Clark, as Missouri’s quarter illustrates.

Sail power is even better in that regard, and sailing ships figure prominently on a number of the quarters. Virginia’s coin depicts the three ships that brought the first 105 colonists (minus one who died) to Jamestown: the Discovery, the Susan Constant, and the Godspeed. Florida’s quarter features an unidentified Spanish galleon. Maine’s coin depicts a windjammer—specifically, the schooner Victory Chimes (still in operation today). Rhode Island’s quarter displays the racing yacht Reliance, which dominated the America’s Cup race in 1903. Even Illinois’ coin offers up a minute image of a sailboat tacking across the lakefront of Chicago’s skyline.

But just as most sailing ships eventually gave way to steam power, the series of quarters eventually led to the two locomotives that met at Promontory Point, Utah, to mark the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. One locomotive was the Union Pacific’s Engine No. 119; the other engine was the Central Pacific’s Jupiter. Both come together on Utah’s quarter.

Even the promise of the railroads, however, was eventually exceeded by the power of flight. Two quarters—North Carolina’s and Ohio’s—pay homage to their states’ connections to the Wright Brothers and the Wright Flyer on their coins. Florida’s quarter tops the Wright Flyer with a Space Shuttle.

When I sat down to write my recent book on the stories behind the various state quarters, I was overwhelmed by the increasingly varied scenes and events that each state chose to commemorate—peaches and pelicans, sailing ships and spacecraft, mountains and magnolias, and so on for 50 coins. In fact, I soon gave up on any hope that a particularly distinct theme would ever emerge from the series.

In the end, however, I realized that numerous themes crossed and interlaced the series of coins. And one of those themes was America’s love affair with travel—whether by plane, train, or automobile, or by horse, oxen, or row boat—and the idea that a better tomorrow could be across the next river, or over the next mountain range, or around the next corner.

So the next time you pull some of that spare change out of your pocket, check to see if you are holding more than merely change for a dollar. You might be holding one of the great truths of America in the palm of your hand.

Just don’t expect it to get you very far in a New York City cab.

**Jim Noles is the author of A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America—One State Quarter at a Time (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2008).