Flag of Kansas

How to read it

K.S.A. 73-701 adopts a state flag (Laws 1927), and 73-702 (1927, amended 1961 and 1963) describes it at a size of 3 feet by 5 feet, with larger and smaller flags in the same proportions. The field is dark blue. The great seal, without its band of lettering, is 17 inches across, centred between staff and fly with its lower edge 11 inches above the bottom. Above it is the crest: a sunflower “as torn from its stalk in its natural colors” on a bar of twisted gold and blue, the sunflower 6 inches across and the bar 9 inches long, its top 2 inches below the top edge. KANSAS is in gold block letters 5 inches high, with a stroke 1 inch wide, 2 inches above the bottom edge. The law also fixes the colours inside the seal: silver stars, purple hills, a deep yellow sun, green grass, a light blue river, a white boat, a dark brown house, white wagons, a white horse and a bay one, a buffalo almost black and a white motto. The word KANSAS was added in 1961, the Kansas Historical Society says.

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The seal piece by piece

K.S.A. 75-201 describes the great seal of 1861: the east is a rising sun; commerce is a river and a steamboat; agriculture, “the basis of the future prosperity of the state”, is a settler’s cabin and a man ploughing with a pair of horses; beyond is a train of ox-wagons going west; in the background a herd of buffalo retreats, pursued by two Indians on horseback. Around the top is the motto “Ad astra per aspera”, the same as on the state seal, with a cluster of 34 stars beneath. On the flag the outer ring of words (“Great seal of the state of Kansas. January 29, 1861.”) is left off.

The banner of 1925

Before the flag, Kansas adopted a state banner in 1925, made to hang horizontally, with the state’s name and seal surrounded by a sunflower, the Kansas Historical Society says. There were complaints, and the flag followed two years later. The banner was simplified in 1953 to a sunflower on blue.

Telling it from Nebraska’s flag

Both are a state seal on blue. Nebraska’s flag is the seal alone, in gold and silver; Kansas’s has the sunflower crest above the seal and the name KANSAS in gold beneath it.