Mainers may have been justifiably insulted a while back when the U.S. Mint decided to make a measly molehill out of the state’s landmark mountain while refining the final designs for the commemorative quarter.

Not only did the Mint’s artists steal the soaring majesty from our beloved Mount Katahdin, they managed to stunt the soaring pines from our North Woods, too. And when the state’s Pemaquid Light coin finally is issued next year, some Mainers may still be perplexed about why the Mint thought it necessary to chop down a ship’s mast in Daniel Carr’s original design, thereby turning the historic schooner Victory Chimes into what some experts believe is the Pride of Baltimore II.

But a check of the Web reveals that Mainers are by no means the only Americans dissatisfied with the Mint’s less-than-inspired rendering of treasured state symbols and icons. In fact, there’s enough grousing and infighting across the land that the people at the Mint might one day regret that the pesky states got involved in the first place.

In Tennessee, where the quarter displays a few musical instruments in honor of the state’s deep-rooted musical heritage, people wonder how they got stuck with that curious five-string guitar. Before correcting its engraving error, the Mint saw fit to bestow on Delaware the dubious honor of being “The First Stat,” which is not much to crow about.

The latest harangue in this two-bit controversy is taking place in Missouri. The people there voted in an online poll last spring for a design that showed explorers Lewis and Clark paddling a canoe with the famous St. Louis Arch spanning two lovely forested hills in the background. But when Missouri’s governor sent the people’s choice to the U.S. Mint, the artists there decided to trash the lovely scenery of the Show Me State with the same heavy hand they had used to despoil Maine’s natural grandeur. The Mint virtually denuded the Missouri landscape, erased the ripples in the water around the canoe, and even tossed the two intrepid explorers overboard.

In the place of Lewis and Clark, the Mint chose to fill the canoe with several generic explorers to reflect what a spokesman called a greater “historical accuracy.” Critics, who took their protests to the state capitol this week, complained that the redesign makes the canoe look as if it were sinking, and that the St. Louis Arch appears to be attached to the boat itself, like a handle.

Thanks to the Mint’s undiscerning artistic sensibilities, argued one state arts commission member, Missouri’s once historic tribute to Lewis and Clark appears to have been transformed into an “Easter basket” filled with a bunch of wriggling 19th-century nobodies.

Some Western states are feuding over which gets to claim the Rockies, and New Mexicans are arguing over whether their American Indian should be on foot or horseback and whether their Spaniard would translate better as a conquistador or a priest. The infighting ranged far across state borders, too, as Ohio and North Carolina squabbled over who should have custody of the Wright Brothers and the pioneers-of-aviation motif.

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness sure knew how to coin a phrase.