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Illinois' 2024 Innovation dollar pays tribute to the groundbreaking (pun most definitely intended) invention of the steel plow - an apparatus that brought the American agricultural and industrial age together.
Settlers emigrating to the prairies of the Midwest during the 1800s soon found that farming equipment brought from back east - particularly their wooden plows - simply did not cut the mustard, er - sod. For a device that was supposed to be more efficient for the farmer, having to stop and clear the clumped up, sticky earth from the blade every few minutes just would not do.
In Homer Township, Illinois, blacksmith John Lane cleverly took an old sawmill blade and transformed it into a plow, polishing the metal so the troublesome Midwestern sod would not stick and voilà! The contraption was a success - regionally speaking, as Lane and other competitors made these newfangled blades the old-fashioned way, one at a time.
In 1837, another Illinois resident would make the steel plow a commercial success, forever changing the landscape of American agriculture - a man you may have heard of… a man named John Deere.
The Illinois Innovation dollar's reverse features a steel plow and prairie grass. The common obverse depicts the Statue of Liberty and a privy mark of a stylized gear. Edge incused date and Denver mintmark.
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