SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - South Dakota's state bird and the presidents of Mount Rushmore National Memorial soon will find their way into jeans pockets, parking meters and vending machines across America.

South Dakota on Monday becomes the 40th state immortalized on a U.S. Mint quarter during a ceremony at Mount Rushmore's amphitheater.

Edmund Moy, director of the U.S. Mint, joins Gov. Mike Rounds and first lady Jean Rounds at the celebration to pass out free quarters to all children who drop by.

"It's a point of state pride for each one of these quarter rollouts," Moy said. "It's a stunning design, and when South Dakotans take a look at how the coin actually came out, I'm confident that they're going to have as much pride in it as Mint employees did in making this."

The design, picked by residents last year, features a Chinese ring-necked pheasant flying over the carved faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. It's bordered by two heads of wheat and the inscriptions "South Dakota" and "1889," the year South Dakota was admitted into the Union.

It's not the first U.S. Mint coin to feature Mount Rushmore. In 1991, the Mint produced a gold $5 coin, a silver dollar and a half dollar made of nickel and copper to commemorate Mount Rushmore's golden anniversary.

"But this is the first time that it's been on a circulating coin, so a lot of Americans are going to be getting this in their pocket over the next couple of months," Moy said.

Moy's interest in coins began when he was a child growing up in Waukesha, Wis.

His family owned Chinese restaurants, and at a young age he started manning the cash register. When he got bored, Moy would look through the change and began noticing variations in different coins.

"So I started collecting the things that were really different like Indian head pennies or buffalo nickels or mercury dimes, and eventually I amassed quite a collection," Moy said. "My parents reminded me that I had to get it out of the basement when I moved to Washington."

But like many Americans, Moy grew away from the hobby as he reached adulthood.

The 1976 bicentennial quarter piqued his interest, and he returned to collecting when the state quarter program launched in 1999. "A lot of friends and neighbors have a similar story to that," he said.

Moy estimates that 140 million Americans now casually collect the state quarters, which are helping children learn their U.S. geography and drawing adults back to collecting. "It's led to a renaissance, not a resurgence," he said.

A similar ongoing series is planned for the dollar coin, which in modern days has honored Susan B. Anthony and Sakakawea but has yet to catch on as common currency.

A new dollar coin honoring George Washington will be released on Presidents Day in 2007, followed by similar ones honoring the other 36 U.S. presidents who have died, in order of when they served in office. Four will come out each year.

The new coin, like the Sakakawea dollar, will be gold in color and slightly larger than a quarter. But the new design will sport a "modern, hip edge" engraved with the phrases "E Pluribus Unum" and "In God We Trust," as well as the mint mark and date.

"This hasn't been done in America since 1933," Moy said. "So not only will that be a unique feature, but then that also frees up both the face of the coin and the tail of the coin to put a more stunning design on it."

Moy expects to unveil the Washington dollar's design within the next few weeks.

The baby brother of the quarter and dollar - the penny - has a more clouded future.

The Mint announced earlier this year that each penny was costing about 1.2 cents to put into circulation, leading some lawmakers to ponder whether it should be discontinued.

Such drastic measures would take an act of Congress, Moy said, so the Mint in the meantime is researching alternative alloys and more efficient ways to make pennies.

"The bottom line is it doesn't take much money to actually produce these coins," he said. "It's the cost of metal that primarily drives the price, and that's where we need to focus our efforts to bring those costs down."

But new state quarters will continue rolling off the line for another two years, as 10 more states look toward their launches in 2007 and 2008.

For South Dakota's quarter, an advisory committee chose five possible designs and asked the Mint to develop artist renderings. Residents were asked to choose one of the five designs, and after 170,000 votes the pheasant and Mount Rushmore design won out.

Anyone attending Monday's event can trade $10 for a roll of the new quarters. Others wanting an early shot at the new coins can go to any branch of Great Western Bank, which got a week's head start on other financial institutions after winning a drawing.

Monday's ceremony starts at 10 a.m. Mountain time and will feature music from the American Indian drum group Star Nation. The event will move to the Rapid City Central High School gym if the weather is bad.

"It will be a great event," Moy said. "These are always fun, these are always ceremonial, and they do represent a little piece of history in every single state."

On Sunday afternoon, Moy planned to host a free coin collectors forum at the Dahl Art Center in Rapid City, giving hobbyists and people a chance to talk about the hobby.