Does the Louisiana state quarter show an incorrect map?

[midwest]

Here's an interesting article I came across today that includes some information on the Louisiana quarter.

 

West Florida

 

by Ann Gilbert

 

Have you ever wondered why a certain section of southeast Louisiana is called the Florida Parishes? What could this land east of the Mississippi River and north of Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas have to do with Florida, three states away?

 

As we prepare to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the purchase of Louisiana by the United States from France, would you be surprised to learn that St. Tammany and Tangipahoa, as well as the neighboring parishes of Washington, St. Helena, Livingston, East and West Feliciana and East Baton Rouge, were not included?

 

The prevalent impression is that, when President Thomas Jefferson completed his famous land deal in 1803, all the lands in present-day Louisiana were a part of the sale. Such was not the case. It would be seven years (1810) before they became part of the Louisiana Territory. And when Louisiana became a state on April 30, 1812, those eight parishes were still not included. They were added four months later.

It all sounds rather confusing, this blip in the history of the northshore.

 

In fact, this part of Louisiana’s history has been so ignored, misunderstood, and overlooked by historians that even some of those in the state capital who planned for the bicentennial included the Florida Parishes in their first map of the Louisiana Purchase territory. “We had to call them. We couldn’t believe it,” says Samuel Hyde, Ph.D., the Ford Professor of History at Southeastern Louisiana University, and director of the SLU Center for Southeastern Louisiana Studies. He is also the author of a book on West Florida, “Pistols and Politics.”

 

It’s a shame Hyde wasn’t asked to approve the Louisiana Commemorative Quarter, which carries the wrong map of the Louisiana Purchase. It seems someone high up in state government insisted on the boot shape - even today, the Florida Parishes cause controversy.

 

The rest of the article can be read here.

 

[RWB]

I never thought it looked like a pelican.....and , what's the horizontal line supposed to be?