Flag of Arizona

A banner for the rifle team

Arizona’s flag began on a shooting range. In 1910, when Arizona was still a territory, Colonel Charles W. Harris, the adjutant general of the Arizona National Guard, noticed that Arizona’s team was the only one at the National Rifle Matches without a flag or emblem. He drew one: a copper star over a blue field, against a sunburst of red and gold rays.

Who sewed the first flag is less certain. Some accounts credit May Hicks, later May Curtis; others credit Nan Downing Hayden, the wife of Carl Hayden, who later became one of Arizona’s longest-serving members of Congress and is remembered in some accounts as helping with the design. Nan Hayden has been called the “Betsy Ross of Arizona.” The Hayden flag is believed to have burned. The Curtis flag survives in the Arizona Capitol Museum.

Laughed out of the Senate

After statehood in 1912, Governor George W. P. Hunt asked the legislature for a state flag. In 1915 lawmakers adopted blue and gold as the state colors, and a flag bill based on Harris’s design passed the House 29 to 2. In the Senate it ran into ridicule for its bright design, and it died there.

The Third Legislature tried again in 1917 and passed the bill with minor changes. Governor Thomas Campbell neither signed nor vetoed it, so under the Arizona Constitution it became law without his signature. The flag has been part of the state’s law ever since, now as section 41-851 of the Arizona Revised Statutes.

What it shows

• The blue field. The lower half is blue, the same shade as the blue of the US flag. Blue and old gold are Arizona’s official colors.
• Thirteen rays. The upper half has 13 equal rays, seven red and six yellow, spreading from the center of the flag. The law describes the scene as a setting sun. The State Library says the 13 rays honor the original colonies and the red and yellow recall the Spanish flags carried by Coronado’s expedition in 1540.
• The copper star. In the center is a copper-colored five-pointed star, which the law calls “the copper star of Arizona,” rising from the blue field. It stands for the state’s copper, long its most important mineral.

The statute is precise about proportions: a flag four feet high and six feet long, with a star two feet across whose points sit one foot from the top and bottom edges.

Flying the flag

Another section of the law, 41-852, requires the state flag to fly beside the US flag at the Capitol and at county courthouses and city halls, and to fly at half-staff for seven days after an elected state officer dies in office.

Arizona’s flag is often praised by flag designers for its simple, distinctive look. The State Library of Arizona notes that it ranked among the ten best designs in the North American Vexillological Association’s 2001 survey of state and provincial flags.