History of the West Virginia State Flag: Born in War, Built to Last
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History of the West Virginia State Flag: Born in War, Built to Last
It took 66 years, three different designs, two failed flag attempts, and one French artist's motto borrowed from Swiss mountaineers. This is how West Virginia finally got its flag right.
Written by Tidmore Flags product specialists. This post was researched from primary sources including the West Virginia Encyclopedia (e-WV), the West Virginia Legislature's official symbols records, the Library of Congress, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and the WV Gazette-Mail's historical archives. No facts assumed from memory — everything verified before writing.
West Virginia has one of the most honest origin stories in American flag history. There was no grand design committee, no single moment of inspiration, and no flag at all for the first 42 years of the state's existence. What West Virginia got instead was a series of practical failures, each one teaching the legislature something about what a flag actually needs to do — until in 1929, after two rejected designs and a budget complaint about school flags, the state finally settled on a design it could live with forever.
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That flag — white field, blue border, coat of arms ringed with rhododendron, and a Latin motto borrowed from Swiss mountain culture — has flown unchanged for nearly a century. Understanding how West Virginia got there means starting not with flags at all, but with the most unusual birth of any state in American history.
A State Born in the Middle of a War
West Virginia did not exist before the Civil War. The land that became the 35th state was the western portion of Virginia — a mountainous, rugged region separated from the rest of the state by the Allegheny Mountains and, by extension, separated from most of its culture, economy, and politics. Where eastern Virginia was dominated by a wealthy planter class with deep investment in slavery, western Virginia was populated largely by subsistence farmers and small landowners who had little stake in the Confederate cause.
When Virginia voted to secede from the Union in 1861, the western counties refused to follow. Residents of a number of contiguous western counties established a separate pro-Union government under Francis Pierpont, called the Restored Government of Virginia. The sentiment was visible on the ground from the start: in January 1861, the residents of Kingwood erected a flagpole measuring about 105 feet in height and hoisted a handmade streamer with a single word on it — "UNION" — before Virginia had even formally seceded.
Congress accepted the western counties' petition on the condition that the new state provide for the gradual abolition of slavery. The revised constitution was adopted on March 26, 1863, and on June 20, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln admitted West Virginia to the Union as the 35th state. It was one of only two states admitted during the Civil War — along with Nevada — and the only state ever created by separating from a Confederate entity.
West Virginia is the only U.S. state created by separating from a state that had joined the Confederacy. Its statehood was legally controversial — the U.S. Constitution requires a state's consent to divide its territory, and Virginia had obviously not consented — but the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the admission. That wartime birth is written directly into the flag's symbolism, from the date on the boulder to the crossed rifles to the motto itself.
The Frenchman Who Designed the Soul of the Flag
Within months of statehood, the first West Virginia Legislature needed a seal. They turned to Joseph H. Diss Debar — a French-born artist, land agent, and political figure who had settled in Doddridge County after emigrating to America in 1842. The story of how Diss Debar came to West Virginia is itself remarkable: he had followed a woman, Clara Levassor, from France to Parkersburg after her family disapproved of their relationship. He arrived in the region as a land agent, married Clara, and stayed after she died in childbirth in 1849, founding a German-Swiss immigrant colony he named St. Clara in her memory.
Diss Debar was educated in France, spoke English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and had the artistic ability the new state needed. The legislature commissioned him to design the Great Seal of West Virginia in 1863. Seeing the assignment as an opportunity to promote the new state's natural resources and economic potential, he designed a two-sided medallion whose front depicted the people and industries of West Virginia in direct, symbolic terms.
The seal was officially adopted on September 26, 1863 — just three months after statehood — and it has remained unchanged to this day. The coat of arms, which is the front side of that seal, is what appears in the center of the West Virginia State Flag.
What Every Element of the Coat of Arms Means
The Ivy-Draped Boulder
At the center of the coat of arms stands a large rock covered in ivy, with the date June 20, 1863 — West Virginia's admission to the Union — inscribed on its face. The rock symbolizes strength and stability; the ivy represents continuance and permanence. The committee's own description called it: "emblematic of stability and continuance, and on the face of the rock the inscription as if graven with a pen of iron in the rock forever."
The Farmer
Standing to the left of the boulder is a farmer dressed in traditional hunting garb, his right arm resting on plow handles and his left arm supporting a woodsman's ax. A sheaf of wheat and a cornstalk stand beside him. He represents agriculture — one of western Virginia's principal economic pursuits at the time of statehood, practiced on the cleared hillsides and valley floors of the Allegheny Plateau.
The Miner
Standing to the right of the boulder is a miner, a pickax on his shoulder, with barrels, lumps of mineral, and an anvil at his feet. He represents industry — specifically the coal, iron, and mineral wealth that lay beneath the Appalachian hills and would define West Virginia's economy for generations. Behind him, a sledge hammer rests on the anvil, representing the mechanic arts.
The Crossed Rifles & Cap of Liberty
In the foreground, laid as if just set down and ready to be taken up again, are two crossed hunting rifles surmounted by a Phrygian cap — the ancient "cap of liberty." The committee's original description was precise: these elements indicate "that our freedom and liberty were won and will be maintained by the force of arms." West Virginia's flag is the only U.S. state flag to feature crossed rifles.
Montani Semper Liberi
Across the bottom of the seal runs the state motto in Latin: Montani Semper Liberi — Mountaineers Are Always Free. According to State Archivist Virgil A. Lewis's 1906 report, the motto was suggested by Diss Debar himself. He drew it from a phrase long used by Swiss mountaineers — a fitting choice for a man who had founded a Swiss immigrant colony in West Virginia's hills and whose very presence in the state traced back to crossing the Alps of culture and distance to follow someone he loved.
The Rhododendron
The wreath of Rhododendron maximum — the great laurel, or big laurel — that rings the lower half of the flag's coat of arms was not part of the original 1863 seal. It was added to the flag in stages, first appearing on the reverse of the 1905 flag and eventually incorporated into the 1929 design surrounding the coat of arms on both sides. Rhododendron was designated West Virginia's official state flower in 1903, chosen by a vote of the state's schoolchildren.
The Flag's Long Road: A Timeline of Three Designs
West Virginia had its seal from 1863, but an official state flag would take more than four decades to materialize. The path ran through the Civil War, a World's Fair in St. Louis, a practical problem with see-through fabric, a budget crisis for school flags, and finally — in 1929 — the design that has lasted ever since.
West Virginia Becomes the 35th State
President Lincoln signs the proclamation admitting West Virginia to the Union. The state has no official flag. The Great Seal, designed by Joseph Diss Debar, is adopted three months later on September 26, 1863, along with the motto Montani Semper Liberi.
The First Regimental Flags
On January 25, 1864, the legislature passes Joint Resolution No. 5 authorizing a flag for the 7th West Virginia regiment — the earliest known flag authorized by the new state. Individual regimental flags are then presented to each of West Virginia's Union Army regiments before the end of the Civil War. They are made of dark blue silk with golden fringe: the state seal on one side, the U.S. national coat of arms (an eagle with shield, arrows, and olive branch) on the other, with the regiment's name and battle honors listed. These are military colors, not a state flag — but they are the first flags to carry the West Virginia identity.
The Problem Becomes Undeniable
In 1901, when the Secretary to the Governor needed to send a West Virginia flag to a charitable bazaar in New York, the state had no official design — so the secretary improvised, using a regular U.S. flag bearing the state's coat of arms. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis in 1904 made the absence of an official flag impossible to ignore: the West Virginia State Commission reported that the state needed a flag to represent and distinguish itself among the other states at the exposition. Without one, the commission designed its own for the event.
The First Official Flag — The Exposition Design
The commission's exposition flag becomes West Virginia's first official state flag by legislative resolution. The design features a white silk field with a blue border. On the front (obverse) is a sprig of rhododendron — the state flower, chosen just two years earlier. On the reverse is the state's coat of arms. Schools in Ronceverte purchase the new flag and begin using it for patriotic exercises alongside the U.S. flag by June 1906. It is a beginning — but the design has a critical structural flaw that will become apparent almost immediately.
The Second Flag — Fixing What Was Broken
The 1905 flag fails in practice. The different designs on each side of the white field show through the fabric — the colors bleed from reverse to obverse, destroying both images. Worse, the lettering on one side reads toward the staff rather than away from it. The legislature finds the 1905 design has destroyed "the distinctive features of the banner and leaving the state without a prescribed official flag." A new version is adopted on February 25, 1907, in time for the Jamestown Exposition in Norfolk. The fix swaps the sides: the coat of arms moves to the front, and a "State of West Virginia" banner is added above it. The rhododendron moves to the reverse. It is a better flag — but it is now a different flag on each side, which creates a new and ultimately fatal problem: cost.
A Preview of the Modern Design
Unofficial flags made for West Virginia's 50th anniversary celebration in Wheeling feature a design that anticipates what the final flag will look like: a wreath of rhododendron curving upward and partly enclosing the state coat of arms on a single side. This is not an official adoption, but it plants the seed for what comes next. The state can see what a single-sided, unified design would look like — and it works.
The Third and Final Flag — The Design That Lasted
The legislature officially cites the 1907 flag as "impractical of manufacture, making the cost of purchase thereof prohibitive to the schools of the state." The solution is straightforward: eliminate the two-sided design entirely. Senate Joint Resolution Number 18 adopts the current flag — the rhododendron wreath moves from the reverse side to surround the coat of arms on both sides, creating a single unified design that looks the same front and back and can be mass-produced affordably. The proportions are set to match the U.S. flag. The result is the flag that has flown unchanged ever since.
A Pledge Is Adopted
On February 8, 1977, the West Virginia Secretary of State's office formally adopts a Pledge of Allegiance to the state flag: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of West Virginia, which serves as a constant reminder that 'Mountaineers Are Always Free.'"
NAVA Survey
The North American Vexillological Association surveys members and flag enthusiasts on the designs of the 72 U.S. state, territorial, and Canadian provincial flags. West Virginia's flag ranks 51st out of 72 — a mid-range score that reflects the design's clarity and distinctiveness without the bold simplicity that earns top marks in vexillology. The flag is not beloved by flag design experts, but it is unambiguously West Virginia — which was always the point.
Reading the Flag: What You See and What It Means
The West Virginia flag's design is unusually legible for an American state flag. Every element connects directly to something real — the state's birth, its economy, its geography, its founding philosophy. Here is what the completed design communicates.
The white field represents purity. It was chosen in 1905 partly for practical reasons — a light background displays the state's imagery more clearly — and it gives West Virginia's flag an immediately distinctive appearance among American state flags, most of which use blue as their primary field.
The blue border represents the state's loyalty to the Union — a meaningful statement for a state that was literally created by choosing the Union over secession. It frames the white field on all four sides, and by statute the proportions of the flag match those of the U.S. flag.
The coat of arms at the center is the front side of the Great Seal of West Virginia, designed by Joseph Diss Debar in 1863 and adopted unchanged. It shows the farmer, the miner, the foundation boulder, the crossed rifles, the cap of liberty, and the motto — the complete story of what West Virginia is and how it came to be.
The rhododendron wreath that rings the lower half of the coat of arms brings in the natural world of the Mountain State — the great laurel that blooms across West Virginia's hillsides every spring, chosen as the state flower in 1903 by a vote of the state's schoolchildren. The 1929 redesign moved this wreath from the reverse of the flag to surround the coat of arms on both sides, solving the two-sided manufacturing problem and unifying the design.
The red ribbons — one above the coat of arms reading "State of West Virginia" and one below bearing the motto "Montani Semper Liberi" — were formalized in the 1907 redesign. The red color has no formal statutory explanation, but echoes the red in the U.S. flag's stripes.
The only state flag with crossed rifles. West Virginia is the only state in the Union whose flag bears crossed rifles. This is not incidental — it is a deliberate statement written into the original 1863 seal, referencing the force of arms by which western Virginia's freedom from the Confederacy was secured and maintained. The rifles are hunting rifles, not military weapons, a reminder that the Mountain State's culture of armed independence predates the Civil War by generations.
Joseph Diss Debar: The Man Behind the Motto
The story of the West Virginia flag is, in large part, the story of one man who happened to be in the right place at a pivotal moment. Joseph Hubert Diss Debar was born on March 6, 1820, in the Alsace region of France near Strasbourg. The son of an estate manager for Cardinal Prince de Rohan, he was educated in France, spoke five languages, and emigrated to the United States in 1842 — arriving in America aboard a ship on which he befriended Charles Dickens during the crossing.
He arrived in Parkersburg as a land agent and eventually settled in Doddridge County, where he founded the German-Swiss immigrant colony of St. Clara. For 29 years he lived in either Parkersburg or St. Clara, working as a land agent, a sketcher of West Virginia scenes and people, and eventually as West Virginia's commissioner of immigration from 1864 to 1871, recruiting workers and landowners from Europe. He brought many Swiss farmers to the state; the town of Helvetia, founded during his tenure, is a direct result of his work.
When the first West Virginia Legislature needed a seal in 1863, Diss Debar was the obvious choice — artistically talented, deeply embedded in the new state's political and civic life, and genuinely invested in West Virginia's future. He saw the commission as an opportunity to tell the story of the state: its stability (the rock), its industries (the farmer, the miner), its liberty (the rifles, the cap), and its independence of spirit (the motto).
For the motto, he drew on something he knew from his own cultural background. The phrase Montani Semper Liberi had long been used by Swiss mountaineers — and Diss Debar, who had spent years recruiting Swiss immigrants to West Virginia's mountains, understood its resonance. According to State Archivist Virgil A. Lewis's 1906 report, the motto was Diss Debar's suggestion, and it was adopted along with the seal on September 26, 1863.
Diss Debar left West Virginia in his later years, moved to Philadelphia, and died on January 13, 1905 — less than two months before West Virginia adopted its first official state flag, which carried the seal he had designed 42 years earlier. He died before he could see his work fly on an official state banner. The Great Seal he designed in 1863 has never been changed. His most lasting creation is on every West Virginia flag.
Why It Took Three Tries: The Practical Logic of Flag Design
The story of West Virginia's three flags is not a story of indecision — it is a story of solving real engineering problems in sequence.
The 1905 flag failed because of fabric transparency. A white silk field with different designs on each side creates an inevitable problem: the dyes bleed through. Anyone looking at the front of the flag could see the reverse image faintly behind it, corrupting both designs. The legislature was precise about what this meant: it destroyed "the distinctive features of the banner."
The 1907 flag fixed the transparency problem by making the obverse and reverse serve different purposes — coat of arms on front, rhododendron on back — but introduced a cost problem. Flags with two different printed designs cost more to manufacture than flags with one unified design. When the legislature looked at providing the state flag to every school in West Virginia, the 1907 design was "impractical of manufacture, making the cost of purchase thereof prohibitive to the schools."
The 1929 solution was elegant: move the rhododendron wreath from the back of the flag to surround the coat of arms on the front, creating a single unified image that could appear identically on both sides. Cheaper to produce. Clearer in design. And — as the unofficial 1913 anniversary flags had shown — genuinely more beautiful. The rhododendron wreath unifies the flag's natural and civic symbols in a way the two-sided design never could.
The 1929 redesign was explicitly motivated by the goal of putting West Virginia state flags in every school in the state. The legislature's stated concern was that the 1907 flag was too expensive to mass-produce for schoolhouses. The current flag — affordable to manufacture, identical front and back, clear and readable — was partly shaped by the practical need to make it accessible to the state's children. It has been in those classrooms for nearly a century.
West Virginia State Flag — Questions & Answers
Q: When was the West Virginia state flag adopted?
The current West Virginia state flag was officially adopted on March 7, 1929, by Senate Joint Resolution Number 18. West Virginia had its first official state flag in 1905 — 42 years after statehood — but that design and a revised 1907 version both proved impractical to manufacture. The 1929 design is the one that has flown unchanged ever since.
Q: What does the West Virginia state flag mean?
The flag's white field represents purity. The blue border represents loyalty to the Union. The coat of arms tells the state's founding story: a farmer and a miner flanking an ivy-covered boulder inscribed June 20, 1863 (statehood date), two crossed rifles with a Phrygian cap representing liberty won by arms, and the motto Montani Semper Liberi — Mountaineers Are Always Free. A wreath of rhododendron (the state flower) surrounds the coat of arms.
Q: What does "Montani Semper Liberi" mean?
Montani Semper Liberi is Latin for "Mountaineers Are Always Free." It is the official motto of West Virginia, adopted on September 26, 1863. The phrase was suggested by Joseph H. Diss Debar, the French-born artist who designed the state seal, and was borrowed from a phrase long used by Swiss mountaineers to express their independence of spirit.
Q: Why does the West Virginia flag have crossed rifles?
The two crossed hunting rifles represent that West Virginia's freedom and liberty were won — and will be maintained — by the force of arms. They appear in the coat of arms in front of the central boulder, topped by a Phrygian cap (cap of liberty). This imagery directly references West Virginia's formation during the Civil War, when western Virginians broke from Confederate Virginia to remain in the Union. West Virginia is the only U.S. state flag to feature crossed rifles.
Q: Who designed the West Virginia state seal that appears on the flag?
The Great Seal was designed by Joseph H. Diss Debar, a French-born artist and politician who had settled in Doddridge County. He was commissioned by the first West Virginia Legislature in 1863 and the seal was officially adopted on September 26, 1863. Diss Debar also suggested the motto Montani Semper Liberi. The seal he designed has remained unchanged to this day.
Q: Why is West Virginia's state flag white instead of blue like most state flags?
West Virginia's white field traces back to the original 1905 flag designed for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The white field made it easier to display the state's rhododendron and coat of arms clearly, and it gave the flag an immediately distinctive appearance from neighboring states. Blue appears as a border stripe, representing the state's loyalty to the Union. The white field has remained the defining visual characteristic of the flag through all three of its official designs.
Now that you know the flag's history, make sure you're flying it at the right size. Read the West Virginia State Flag Size Guide — every pole height, setting, and regional consideration for the Mountain State, from Charleston valley homes to ridge-top properties in the Potomac Highlands.
Sources: West Virginia Encyclopedia (e-WV) — State Flag, State Seal, Joseph H. Diss Debar, Montani Semper Liberi entries | West Virginia Legislature Official Symbols | Library of Congress — Today in History, June 20 | West Virginia Public Broadcasting — September 26, 1863 | Britannica — Flag of West Virginia | WV Gazette-Mail — Ernest E. Blevins, "West Virginia Flag Turns 90" | Wikipedia — Flag of West Virginia, Joseph H. Diss Debar
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