History:
1905 Flag:
The need for an official state flag arose in 1904 when the West Virginia State Commission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis reported that the state required a flag or ensign to represent and distinguish itself among the other U.S. states at the exposition. In lieu of an official state flag, the commission adopted and used a state flag of its own design at the West Virginia building at the exposition, which was a “sprig of mountain laurel upon an immaculate white field with a pale blue border”.
Following its formal adoption by the legislature, schools and other institutions throughout West Virginia began flying the new state flag.
1907 Flag:
By 1907, the West Virginia Legislature found the 1905 state flag design to be completely unfeasible due to the lettering on one side reading toward the staff, and the differing colors on each respective side showing through the opposite side of the flag’s white field of cloth. The West Virginia Legislature sought to remedy the state flag’s design flaws in 1907 so that the state could be properly represented at the Jamestown Exposition in Norfolk.
On February 25, 1907 the West Virginia Legislature passed Joint Resolution 2, which amended the flag by removing the seal and motto from the reverse side and changing the color of the bordering fringe from carmine red to old gold. Instead of the seal and motto, the reverse of the flag was changed to consist of “a spring or sprig of the rhododendron maximum”.
1929 Flag:
The flag design ratified in 1907 remained the state’s official flag until 1929. The state of West Virginia sought a flag design that could be produced inexpensively so that the state flag could be mass-produced for the state’s public schools. The 1907 flag proved to be more costly to reproduce due to the two different symbols on each side of the banner, the state’s coat of arms on the obverse and the state’s flower on the reverse. The West Virginia Legislature decided the state flag should be stamped with a design that would integrate both the coat of arms and the state flower on both sides. The design of the present state flag was officially adopted by the West Virginia Legislature on March 7, 1929, by West Virginia Senate Joint Resolution Number 18.
West Virginia’s State Nickname:
West Virginia’s official nickname is “The Mountain State” because, being part of the Appalachian Mountain system, the entire state is filled with hills and old mountains.
