Flag of Idaho

From a militia flag to a state flag

Idaho adopted a state flag by an act approved on March 12, 1907. The law called for a blue flag carrying the state’s name and left the details of its lettering, colors and size to the adjutant general, the head of the state militia. The flag made at the time showed only a loose version of the picture at the center of the seal, and it is preserved by the Idaho State Historical Society.

In 1927, when the legislature rewrote the National Guard laws, it wrote the adjutant general’s specifications into the statute. From then on the flag had to carry the full state seal. The law, now section 46-801 of the Idaho Code, describes the official ceremonial flag as silk, five feet six inches by four feet four inches, with a gilt fringe.

The seal at the center

The seal is the heart of the flag, and it has its own story. In 1891 the new state’s legislature held a competition for a seal design, and the winner was Emma Edwards, a young artist who later married and became Emma Edwards Green. Governor Norman B. Willey awarded her a $100 prize on March 5, 1891. She is the only woman to have designed a US state seal.

Her design is crowded with meaning, and in 1994 the legislature put her own description of it into law:

• The miner with a pick and shovel stands for Idaho’s mining industry.
• The woman holding the scales of justice and a spear topped with a liberty cap stands for justice, liberty and equality.
• The shield shows a pine tree for timber, a farmer plowing for agriculture, and the Snake River.
• The elk’s head above the shield stands for the state’s game laws.
• The star stands for a new light among the states.
• Cornucopias, wheat and syringa, the state flower, frame the scene.
• The motto, Esto perpetua, “Let it be perpetual,” runs on a ribbon.

In 1957 the legislature authorized a standardized, full-color official version of the seal, painted by Paul B. Evans, and that version appears on the flag today.

The band and the lettering

Below the seal, a red band carries the words “State of Idaho” in gold block letters. Like many seal-on-blue flags, the lettering is what makes Idaho’s flag recognizable from a distance.