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Year Adopted: 1900

Florida had Territory status from 1822 to 1845 when it was admitted to the Union as the 27th State.

The current design of Florida's state flag was adopted in 1900. In that year, Florida voters ratified a constitutional amendment based on an 1899 joint resolution of the state legislature to add diagonal red bars, in the form of a St. Andrew's cross, to the flag. Between 1868 and 1900, Florida's state flag consisted of a white field with the state seal in the center. During the late 1890s, Governor Francis P. Fleming suggested that a red cross be added, so that the banner did not appear to be a white flag of truce or surrender when hanging still on a flagpole.

In the rewriting of the Constitution in 1968, the flag is described in these words: "The seal of the state, of diameter one half the hoist, in the center of a white ground. Red bars in width one fifth the hoist extending from each corner toward the center, to the outer rim of the seal." (ref. Florida Dept of State, Florida Heritage, State Symbols) January 2014. The State Seal was revised in 1985. The revised Seal has a Seminole Indian woman rather than a Western Plains Indian, the steamboat is more accurate, and the cocoa palm has been changed to a sabal palm as the Florida Legislature prescribed in 1970. (ref; flheritage.com)