with making recommendations on coinage design, and then to its sculptor member, James Earle Fraser, designer of the Buffalo nickel. Fraser wrote to Rossi on May 18, deprecating the designs, "the bear is entirely too short, and the whole thing inexperienced and amateurish." He recommended that Chester Beach (credited with the design of the 1923 Monroe Doctrine coin) or Robert I. Aitken (who had created the 1915 Panama-Pacific $50 pieces) be hired, as both were from California and might create "something which would be far more interesting and with a bigger sense of what California really is". Despite Fraser's recommendations, the Citizens' Committee stayed with Mora, who quickly turned out the finished sketches. Anthony Swiatek and Walter Breen, in their volume on U.S. commemorative coins, suggested that the Citizens' Committee did not hire Beach or Aitken due to lack of time and an unwillingness to pay their large fees. The finished models were sent to the Philadelphia Mint on June 17, and were forwarded to the Commission. By this time, Fraser was no longer a member of the Commission and they were sent to Lorado Taft, along with a note that the Citizens' Committee had not hired Aitken due to the expense and that the new designs were little better than the old. However, both Taft and another member, Louis Ayres, recommended acceptance. Ayres did suggest "that 'In God We Trust' be placed in some position where it does not seem as if the '49ers were frying it in oil". Numismatic historian Don Taxay averred that this advice was not followed due to the lack of an alternative position in which to place the motto. With the designs accepted, the Mint created working dies based on the plaster model in July 1925. These were sent from Philadelphia to the San Francisco Mint, where 150,000 coins were struck in August, plus 200 reserved for inspection and testing at the 1926 meeting of the United States Assay Commission. Design In creating the half dollar, Mora used motifs evoking California at the time of statehood in 1850. The obverse depicts a Gold Rush-era prospector, kneeling. He washes material with his pan, seeking bits of placer gold. The reverse adapts the Flag of California, known as the Bear Flag, showing a grizzly bear. Mora left the fields, or background, of the coin unpolished, giving the piece a textured look. The California Diamond Jubilee half