A panel finished writing three suggested designs for North Dakota's state quarter, which emphasize open space, rugged terrain, wildlife and agriculture.

The brief narratives will now be forwarded to the U.S. Mint, to help its artists draw mockups of how the special quarter will look, Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple said. Once the artists finish and return the designs, they will be publicized to solicit North Dakotans' opinions about their favorite images, he said.

"It was quite a challenge," Dalrymple said Thursday. "I don't think we're going to know whether we succeeded or not, until we start seeing some of the designs."

Dalrymple is chairman of a state commission, appointed by Gov. John Hoeven, to draft narratives for the coin design.

It is part of a U.S. Mint program to issue special quarters for each of the 50 states. Twenty-eight are already in circulation. The North Dakota coin is not scheduled for circulation until 2006.

The commission's three design proposals emphasize agriculture, the state's landscape and its western Badlands. Descriptions of them were kept deliberately brief to give the designers leeway in their work, Dalrymple said.

The narratives will be accompanied by a number of photos, including images of the western Badlands, bison, wheat and sunflower fields, and waterfowl, said commission member Sara Otte Coleman, who is the state tourism director.

Dalrymple, Coleman and other commission members, including Secretary of State Al Jaeger and Merl Paaverud, superintendent of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, said it was difficult to whittle down the narratives of their favored designs.

"The more we talked about it, the more the concepts wanted to expand," Dalrymple said. "And, unfortunately, what you really should be doing in the case of a quarter is, narrowing it down to something very basic and very simple."