Catalog

Year Adopted: 1907

The area that became Idaho was acquired with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. It had status as The Territory of Idaho from 1863 until July 1890, when it was admitted as the 43rd U.S. State.

The Idaho flag contains the Great Seal of Idaho on a blue field, with a scroll underneath of gold block letters two inches high on a red band reading “State of Idaho”. The flag was adopted by the 1907 legislature. The state seal was designed in 1891 by Emma Edwards Green, daughter of John C. Edwards, a former Governor of Missouri (1844-48) and emigrant from Stockton, California. A former art student in New York entered a state design competition and won unanimously. The seal depicts a centered shield bearing symbolic images of the state, a woman on the left representing equality, liberty and justice, and at right, a miner, above the shield an elk's head. A scroll above reads the Latin phrase "Esto Perpetua" (Let it be perpetual"). The state seal was updated in 1957.