flag of Utah

Utah’s early flag designs incorporated the state seal. The design of the seal was adopted in 1850 by the Territory of Utah and modified by the artist Harry Edwards when Utah became a state in 1896. He added a bald eagle and crossed U.S. flags to indicate the protection of the United States and Utah’s loyalty to the nation. The inscribed dates 1847 and 1896 refer, respectively, to the settlement of the original Mormon community at Salt Lake City and the achievement of statehood. The word industry is reinforced by a beehive; Deseret, the Mormon settlers’ name for the territory, means “honeybee.” On either side of the beehive are sego lilies (the state flower), which are said to be a symbol of peace; they recall that early inhabitants often were forced to eat the bulbs of the lily when other food was unavailable.

On March 9, 1911, Utah adopted a flag proposed by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The official design featured the central emblem of the state seal in white, but a sample flag that was to be presented to the warship USS Utah incorporated that design in full color with a narrow gold ring around it. The favorable reaction to this unauthorized modification led to a change in the law on March 11, 1913. The new flag, widely promoted by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (a cultural organization similar to the DAR), remained unaltered for nearly a century.

Flag makers over the years frequently misrepresented some of the details in the Utah state seal, obliterating or modifying various emblems. As the centennial of the 1911 Utah flag adoption approached, efforts were made to produce an official artistic rendition of the flag and state seal that more closely represented the 1913 version of the flag and included details of color shades. This revised design was endorsed by the Utah legislature in February 2011, and the flag was officially adopted on March 16, 2011.

In 2021 the state government formed a task force to oversee the selection of a new flag design, the process of which included soliciting input from the public as well as from design experts. A new design, nicknamed the Beehive Flag, was selected by the task force in 2022, approved by the legislature and governor in 2023, and took effect on March 9, 2024. The new flag features a dark blue band at the top of the flag, symbolic of the state’s skies and lakes. The white band in the middle, with its jagged top, represents the state’s snow-capped mountains. The red band at the bottom of the flag symbolizes the red-rock canyons in the state’s southern region. A dark blue hexagon at the center of the flag, with a gold interior rim symbolizing prosperity, contains a gold beehive representing the state’s history as well as a sense of community and the state motto of “Industry.” Below that is a small white five-point star, representing the star that was added to the U.S. flag when Utah became a state in 1896 and symbolic of the state’s loyalty to the country. When the Beehive Flag came into effect, the previous design was given the status of “historic state flag,” with provisions made for its continued display alongside the new flag.