Image provided by the U.S. Mint, via the governor's office

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PHOENIX — And the winners are: the Grand Canyon and a saguaro.

Gov. Janet Napolitano will announce today that she has chosen the design for the new state quarter that includes perhaps the two most recognizable features of Arizona.

The design, also the winner in a public vote, will include a rising or setting sun; not even members of the special commission that picked the design were sure which it was.

And should anyone be unclear about whose coin it is, it will include the name of the state, the 1912 date it was admitted to the union, and the motto "The Grand Canyon State" emblazoned on a banner.

The United States Mint artist "did a pretty good job by using that banner," said Tom Trompeter, a coin collector who served on the state's quarter commission. "It looks like two separate ideas."

Matthew Rounis, a fifth-grader who also served on the commission, said the design combination "represents the entire state, not just one section, and it also serves as a map of Arizona, since in the northern part you have the Grand Canyon and in the southern part you have the saguaro, which is indigenous to those areas."

Napolitano's choice also happens to be the top choice of the nearly 113,000 people who weighed in on the Internet and, to a lesser extent, by phone, fax and mail, and through a Capitol suggestion box.

The design gathered 49,516 first-place votes. Coin designs featuring just the saguaro and just the Grand Canyon were far back at 24,262 and 23,526 first-place votes, respectively.

A fourth design, showing Navajo code talkers and commemorating their role in World War II, tallied 12,474 votes. And the fifth, showing the expedition of John Wesley Powell through the Grand Canyon, was far back at just 2,340 first-place votes.

It will be a year before anyone gets to look at the state's coin. The U.S. Mint has set a May 2008 release date.

All five finalists were selected by the Arizona State Quarter Commission, which reviewed various suggestions both for content and, for lack of a better word, "draw-ability." The coins had to be able to depict the scene given both the limited size of the quarter and the restrictions on how high or deep the stamping could be.

And some ideas were rejected for political or other reasons.

For example, one commission member suggested a Hopi kachina might be an effective way to represent something unique to Arizona. But that idea was jettisoned, not only because it meant singling out one tribe but also because of the belief that there were still a lot of raw feelings about the partition of Navajo and Hopi lands and the forced relocations.

And a suggestion to use Mission San Xavier del Bac, south of Tucson, was dismissed because it remains an active Catholic church.

Even the decision to select Powell making his way down the Colorado River was fraught with concerns over political correctness. Committee members insisted the inscription should say that Powell was "exploring" the Grand Canyon, because American Indians might take offense at the suggestion he "discovered" what they knew was there all along.

The U.S. Mint began issuing state quarters in 1999. Those release dates are based on the order of states' entry into the Union. Arizona, as the 48th state, is trailed only by Alaska and Hawaii.