The flags of the U.S. states exhibit a wide variety of regional influences and local histories, as well as widely different styles and design principles. Modern state flags date from the 1890s when states wanted to have distinctive symbols at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Most state flags were designed and adopted between 1893 and World War I.
According to a 2001 survey by the North American Vexillological Association, New Mexico has the best-designed flag of any U.S. state, U.S. territory, or Canadian province, while Georgia's 2001–2003 state flag was rated the worst design.
Read more about Flags Of The U.S. States: Current State Flags, Current State Ensigns, See More
Famous quotes containing the words flags of, flags and/or states:
“No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,—flags of all her nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can read,—while we walk under the triumphal arches of the elms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Still, it is dear defiance now to carry
Fair flags of you above my indignation,”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory
From false to false among false maids in love
Upbraid my falsehood.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)