About the Original Maine Flag

The star and pine: Maine’s first flag

Maine became a state in 1820, but it wasn’t until 1901 that it got its first official flag: a green pine tree and blue star on a buff, or tan, colored field. The original Maine flag flew for only a few short years before being replaced with the current blue flag featuring the state seal in 1909, but has made a comeback in recent years as more and more Mainers are choosing to send it up their flagpoles instead.

The rise in popularity of this historical flag comes as cities and states across the U.S. are taking another look at their own flags, many of which look a lot like Maine’s. As radio host Roman Mars pointed out is his now-famous 2015 TED talk “Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you've never noticed,” these “seal on a bedsheet” flags make for less-than-ideal flag design: seals are meant to be read up close on paper, and good flags ought to be simple, unique, and distinguishable from far away.

Our original Maine flag design

The 1901 law describing the original Maine flag lays out the size and location of the the pine tree and star, but does not specify an exact design for either:

The State Flag is hereby declared to be buff charged with the emblem of the State, a pine tree proper in the center and the polar star (a mullet of five points), in blue in the upper corner. The star to be equidistant from the hoist and upper border of the flag, the distance from the two borders to the center of the star equal to about one quarter the hoist. This distance and the size of the star being proportionate to the size of the flag.

The few surviving examples depict photorealistic trees that are not easily reproducible and can only be painted, printed or embroidered onto a flag field. In choosing a design for our Maine Flag Company reproduction of the original Maine flag we wanted something that was easier to draw or to recreate using traditional flag making techniques.

We also wanted a design that was historically accurate, and that led us to Maine’s other official state flag. That’s right, Maine has two state flags! In addition to the commonly used blue flag, Maine has a white merchant and marine flag meant to be flown by Maine-flagged ships. This flag – which dates from 1939 – also contains a green pine tree and we found that it looked great on the original Maine flag as well.

A design that’s catching on

As of June 2023, we have manufactured some 9,000 handcrafted original Maine flags and countless stickers, patches, hats, shirts and other products to all U.S. states and several countries.