The new design on the front of the 2005 nickels features a new image of Thomas Jefferson.  The word "Liberty" appears in a style that is like Jefferson's own handwriting.

The first new 2005 design on the nickel's reverse (back) features the American bison, also called a buffalo.  This animal used to roam the plains in such great numbers that the animal was noted often by Lewis and Clark in their journals.  This buffalo also reminds us of the American Indians who counted on the animal for food, clothing, and shelter, and of all the wildlife that the explorers wrote about and brought back to the United States as a record for science.

The second reverse design shows a view of the Pacific Ocean, the goal that the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached after more than a year of hard travel.  The scene surrounds a quote written by Captain Clark:  "Ocean in view!  O!  The joy!"

Hopes were dashed when the Expedition proved that the Missouri River was not part of a Northwest Passage across the continent by water and that there were two mountain ranges to cross instead of one.  Still, less than a century later, the continent was crossed by telegraph and railroad lines that brought the eastern and western coasts together in ways hard to imagine in Lewis and Clark's time.  Today, with cars, airplanes, telephones, and computers, the distance between coasts seems even shorter... but the steps that Lewis and Clark took were among the first to bring them so close together.