StatesFacts
Menu

All 50 states

New Jersey state symbols

New Jersey has 26 official state symbols. The oldest are the Great Seal, created in 1777, and the flag of 1896; the newest, from 2023, are franklinite, the state mineral, and cranberry juice, the state juice. Schoolchildren campaigned for many of them. New Jersey has no official state song, and its motto was never formally adopted.

26 official designations · every law checked October 23, 2026

The first symbols

New Jersey’s oldest emblems are the Great Seal of 1777, with its motto “Liberty and Prosperity,” and the flag of 1896. The state bird came much later. In January 1935 Senator Dryden Kuser introduced a bill to name one, noting that 44 other states already had a bird. Senators greeted the first reading by whistling, and the bill first fell four votes short, but it passed, and Governor Harold G. Hoffman signed it on June 27, 1935. The red oak became the state tree by resolution in 1950, and in 1951 the flowering dogwood became the State Memorial Tree, honoring the garden clubs that had planted dogwoods along Route 22 since 1944 as a memorial to World War II service members.

The violet took the longest. A 1913 resolution named it the state flower, but the resolution lapsed when the next session began, and a 1961 bill never passed the Senate. Garden clubs kept pressing, and a law approved in 1972 finally made the common meadow violet official.

Students at the State House

New Jersey’s schoolchildren have been especially busy. Students from Sunnybrae School in Hamilton Township brought a song and a poem to the State House for the honey bee, the “State Bug,” in 1974. Fifth graders from Harrington Park and an eighth grader from Freehold lobbied for the horse, whose head already crowned the state seal; Governor Brendan Byrne signed the bill at the Sussex County Fair in 1977, after it passed the Assembly with what a Trenton newspaper called a single “neigh.” One assemblywoman had wanted the collie.

The 1991 dinosaur law was the work of 97 students led by the fourth-grade teacher Joyce Berry, who lobbied for four years for Hadrosaurus foulkii. Teacher Mary Ellen Soriano’s students won the brook trout, the only trout native to New Jersey, in 1992. Fourth graders in Brick got the highbush blueberry named in 2004, a nod to the first cultivated blueberries, grown at Whitesbog in 1916. Students at Stony Brook Elementary in Hopewell started the effort that made Thomas Edison the state inventor in 2019, and fourth graders in Cinnaminson spent three years winning cranberry juice its place as state juice in 2023.

Turtles, bass and butterflies

Some symbols came from public votes and clubs. In 2018 the bog turtle became the state reptile after Princeton students ran a “Turtle March Madness” bracket of 12 turtle species; about 2,000 people voted and the bog turtle won 53 percent. The Garden Club of New Jersey chose the black swallowtail, found in all 21 counties, as state butterfly in 2016. Students from the New Jersey Academy of Aquatic Sciences in Camden campaigned for the striped bass as state saltwater fish in 2017. The knobbed whelk, often called the conch, became the state shell in 1995.

Ships, science and dogs

New Jersey has two official vessels. The A.J. Meerwald, an oyster schooner built in 1928 at Dorchester on Delaware Bay and later a Coast Guard fireboat in World War II, became the state tall ship in 1998. The battleship USS New Jersey, launched in 1942 and among the most decorated in US history, became the state ship in 2017; it is now a museum in Camden.

Two symbols honor discoveries. Streptomyces griseus, the state microbe since 2019, is the soil bacterium from which Rutgers researchers led by Selman Waksman derived streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis, in 1943. Franklinite, named for Benjamin Franklin and the main zinc ore of the Franklin and Sterling Hill mines in Sussex County for more than a century, became the state mineral in 2023. And the Seeing Eye dog, from the guide-dog school based in New Jersey since 1931, became the state dog in 2020. The square dance has been the state’s American folk dance since 1983.

1 1770s 1800s 1830s 1860s 1 1890s 1920s 1 2 1950s 1 3 1 1980s 4 1 7 2010s 3 2020s
Official symbols adopted per decade. The busiest decade was the 2010s, with seven.

Flag, seal, song, motto and nickname

Animals

Plants and fungi

Earth and sky

Food and drink

Culture and history

Questions about New Jersey's symbols

What is the New Jersey state bird?
The eastern goldfinch, now usually called the American goldfinch, adopted in 1935.
What is the New Jersey state flower?
The common meadow violet, made official by a law approved in 1972. A 1913 resolution first named the violet, but it lapsed.
Does New Jersey have a state song?
No. New Jersey has no official state song.
What is the New Jersey state dinosaur?
Hadrosaurus foulkii, dug from a marl pit in Haddonfield in 1858. State law calls it the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton found anywhere.
What is New Jersey's state bug?
The honey bee. The 1974 law formally names it the "State Bug."
Photo credits (11)

Something out of date? Tell us and we will check it against the law.

Sources