Wednesday 13 April 2016

By Sean Long


Iowa was admitted to the union as the 29th state on Dec. 28, 1846. As a Midwestern state, Iowa forms a bridge between the forests of the east and the grasslands of the high prairie plains to the west. Its gently rolling landscape rises slowly as it extends westward from the Mississippi River, which forms its entire eastern border.

The Missouri River and its tributary, the Big Sioux, form the western border, making Iowa the only U.S. state that has two parallel rivers defining its borders. Iowa is bounded by the states of Minnesota to the north, Wisconsin and Illinois to the east, Missouri to the south, and Nebraska and South Dakota to the west.

The first Iowa Territory legislature met in Burlington before a territorial capital city was finally selected in Johnson County. In Iowa City, the government seat was established in a grand structure known today as Old Capitol. Built in the early 1840s, Old Capitol served as the last capital of Iowa Territory and the first capitol of the state. Under the 1857 Iowa constitution, the seat of state government was moved to Des Moines, a more central location.

Iowa did not have a state flag after becoming a member of the Union in1846. When the US participated in the World War I, in 1917, Iowa still did not possess a flag. The Iowa National Guardsmen noticed that other state units carried special banners that gave them individual identities. They too felt the need of an appropriate flag to represent themselves. The Governor William L. Harding mulled over this proposal and agreed.

Iowa's flag was designed by the state's Daughters of the American Revolution in response to Iowa national Guardsmen stationed at the Mexican border during WWI that requested an emblem of Iowa to represent their unit.

The Iowa Flag is made out of three vertical stripes of blue, white and red, orchestrated from left to right. The focal white stripe bears the picture of a bald eagle, with a blue lace dangling from its beak. The strip peruses "Our Liberties We Prize, And Our Rights We Will Maintain", the state motto of Iowa. The state name is scratched in intense red letters, beneath the saying. The imagery of Iowa Flag lies in the banner's exceptionally design. The hues and the picture genuinely portray the standards of the state.




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