U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has huge responsibilities trying to revive the housing market, stave off global financial crises and steer the American economy toward stability and renewed prosperity.

That to do list got longer recently when the task of selecting a Yellowstone Park coin design fell to the secretary after two review panels didn’t agree on a choice.

The U.S. Mint announced two months ago that Yellowstone Park would be featured on one of the quarters released in 2010, the first year of the America the Beautiful Quarters Program. A law enacted last year directs the Mint to issue 56 new quarters, each with a tails side design depicting a national park or other national site in each of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. (The familiar portrait of George Washington will be on the other side.) Yellowstone counts as the Wyoming quarter although the northern and western edges are in Montana. A Glacier Park quarter for Montana is scheduled for release in 2011.

Announcing the park quarters program, U.S. Mint Director Ed Moy said: “The designs will help reinvigorate interest in our national parks, forests, fish and wildlife refuges, and other national sites, as well as educate the public about their importance to us and our history.”

Recognizing how important Yellowstone is to the American people and to our regional economy, we have a recommendation for Geithner: Go with the bison.

The design showing a crowd of people and the walkway as Old Faithful erupts is too crowded. It certainly isn’t the kind of picture that shows up on post cards. Visitors don’t come to Yellowstone to see people; they come to see wildlife and natural landscapes. Furthermore, the forest around the Upper Geyser Basin isn’t nearly as dense as it appears on this coin design.

The geyser and Old Faithful Inn design features an accurate sketch of the rustic 1904 log hotel. But the foreground (about a third of the design) simply shows geyser runoff. It’s too much (mostly) empty space. If this were a news photo, we’d probably crop the bottom off.

That leaves the bison and geyser, apparently just starting to erupt. Bison often roam around the Old Faithful basin. Visitors not fortunate enough to see these hefty creatures strolling amid the geysers along the Firehole River may still see their signs: buffalo chips here and there or hoof prints sunk into the fragile, mineral-laden terrain.

So, Mr. Secretary, go with the bison. Among the record 3.26 million visitors who flocked to Yellowstone in the first 10 months of this year, most got a glimpse of one or more of the nation’s last wild, free-roaming bison. Like Old Faithful, the bison is a Yellowstone icon. These two icons represent what is most spectacular and memorable about a place that has been called Wonderland for 137 years.