Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Iowa Flag And Its History

By Sean Long


The word "Iowa" comes from the American Indian tribe of the same name. Iowa was part of the Louisiana Purchase, a deal arranged between President Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte of France that brought a vast tract of the continent under the control of the United States. The area was closed to white settlement until the early 1830s.

The Missouri River and its tributary, the Big Sioux, form the western border, making Iowa the only U.S. state that has two parallel rivers defining its borders. Iowa is bounded by the states of Minnesota to the north, Wisconsin and Illinois to the east, Missouri to the south, and Nebraska and South Dakota to the west.

When Iowa became a state in 1846, its capital was Iowa City; the more centrally located Des Moines became the new capital in 1857. At that time, the state's present boundaries were also drawn.

Iowa was almost 75 years old before the state banner was adopted by the Legislature in 1921. With the memory of the Civil War still fresh in their minds, Iowans had not adopted a state banner because they felt a national banner was the only one needed.

The Daughters of theAmerican Revolution or D.A.R of Iowa set up a flag committee and arranged for a banner designing competition in 1917. The best designer was Mrs. Dixie Cornell Gebhardt who produced the aptest banner. This became the Iowa Regimental Flag, which was later adopted as the state flag on March 29, 1921, by the General Assembly of Iowa.

The Iowa Flag is made out of three vertical stripes of blue, white and red, orchestrated from left to right. The focal white stripe bears the picture of a bald eagle, with a blue lace dangling from its beak. The strip peruses "Our Liberties We Prize, And Our Rights We Will Maintain", the state motto of Iowa. The state name is scratched in intense red letters, beneath the saying. The imagery of Iowa Flag lies in the banner's exceptionally design. The hues and the picture genuinely portray the standards of the state.




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