Flag of North Dakota

How to read it

North Dakota Century Code § 54-02-02 sets a blue field 4 feet 4 inches (132.08 cm) on the pike and 5 feet 6 inches (167.64 cm) on the fly, with a border of knotted yellow fringe 2½ inches (6.35 cm) wide. In the centre of each side is an eagle with outspread wings and open beak, 3 feet 4 inches (101.6 cm) from wingtip to wingtip and 1 foot 10 inches (55.88 cm) from the top of its head to the bottom of the olive branch. Its left foot grasps a sheaf of arrows and its right an olive branch with three red berries; on its breast is a shield whose lower part has seven red and six white stripes. A scroll through its beak bears “E Pluribus Unum”, with 13 five-pointed stars above it and a sunburst over the whole, and a scroll beneath the eagle bears “North Dakota”. The flag must match the regimental flag carried by the First North Dakota Infantry in the Spanish–American War and the Philippine Insurrection in colour, form, size and device, except for the words below the eagle, and reproductions must follow the official design and colour codes of the State Historical Society. The law dates from 1911 (chapter 283, House Bill 152).

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The regimental flag of 1898

The flag was proposed in 1911 by Representative John Fraine, who had served as a major with the First North Dakota Regiment in the Spanish–American War of 1898 and the Philippine Insurrection of 1899, Prairie Public’s Dakota Datebook says. The legislature adopted it on 3 March 1911. A second Datebook entry says the flag only became official in 1943, because the 1911 act had not described its precise colours.

Why it looks like the US coat of arms

A state flag commission set up in 1951 found that the regimental flag “too closely resembled the coat of arms of the United States” and was not symbolic of North Dakota, but a Senate bill of 1953 dissolved the commission and its changes were not made, Prairie Public says; another Datebook entry describes a 1953 bill to change the flag for that resemblance, quickly defeated. The 1911 act put the arrows in the eagle’s right foot and the olive branch in its left; the code today has them the other way round.

The official colours

The State Historical Society’s colour guide, revised on 13 August 2019, gives the field as Pantone 654C dark blue. The rest of the design uses Pantone 131C gold, 187C red, 1225C yellow with shadows of 139C brown, 356C green, 384C yellow-green, 409C silver, 469C dark brown, 468C light tan, 1535C medium brown, 301C medium blue, white and black. Where the guide groups colours, for the leaves and the arrowheads, each is used on its own for separate parts and none is a mixture.