Flag of Colorado

How to read it

The flag is set by Colorado Revised Statutes § 24-80-904, first enacted in 1911 and amended in 1929 and 1964. It has three stripes of equal width at right angles to the staff: blue at the top and bottom, in the blue of the US flag’s canton, and white in the middle. The flag is two-thirds as high as it is long. The red C, in the red of the US flag, begins one-fifth of the flag’s length from the staff end, and its diameter is two-thirds of the flag’s height. The inner edge of the C’s opening is three-quarters as wide as the letter’s bar, and the outer edge of the opening is twice the inner. A gold disc fills the space inside the C. The law also attaches a cord of gold and silver intertwined, with one gold and one silver tassel. The Colorado State Archives dates the act to 5 June 1911.

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Who designed it

The State Archives says the flag was designed by Andrew Carlisle Johnson. The Denver Public Library’s Special Collections names him Andrew Carlisle Carson, and says “Johnson” is a mistake repeated online. The library tells the story from papers left by Minnie F. Wall: members of the Daughters of the American Revolution met in Denver on 14 November 1910 to create a state flag, not knowing Colorado already had one, a state seal on a blue background adopted in 1907, whose only copy sat in a custodian’s closet at the Capitol. Their first draft had two red stripes around a white one with the seal in the middle; Carson’s design replaced it. The Senate passed Senate Bill No. 118 on 25 April 1911 and the House on 6 May, and the flag first appeared in public at a Grand Army of the Republic parade on 30 May.

What changed in 1929 and 1964

The 1911 law named no shades. The State Archives says the General Assembly fixed the red and blue as the national flag’s on 28 February 1929, after a dispute over the colours. Nothing fixed the size of the C either, and the Denver Public Library says that for years it was placed in the centre of the flag and dwarfed by the rest of it. The 1964 law set the letter’s diameter and its distance from the staff, the proportions in the statute today.