July 21, 2012: The Iowa flag flies at West Lyon Community School, between Larchwood and Inwood, the northwesternmost school district in the state.
The Iowa Legislature made the Iowa state flag official on March 29, 1921, according to this story from Radio Iowa four years ago that marked when the flag was first designed. The 1917 sketch of the eagle with the state motto, from Dixie Gebhardt of Knoxville, is in the State Historical Society’s Iowa 101 mobile exhibit.
It may surprise you that in some corners, it was not well-received — not design-wise, but its very existence.
The adoption of a state flag by the general assembly was over the protest of Harper Post, No. 79, G.A.R., at Keosauqua, Van Buren County. When the bill was pending, drafted the Daughters of the American Revolution who furnished the design for the state flag, the Post of Keosauqua resolved “That this Post without a dissenting voice is unutterably opposed to the plan or suggestion now pending before the state legislature of Iowa for the adoption of a state flag or emblem of any description. That we believe such a course dangerous in the extreme. That there should be but one flag and that the good old Stars and Stripes, and none other, to which flag allegiance of all citizens of the United State should be required.
— Wright County Monitor, March 30, 1921 (also printed in Winterset News, March 30, and Seymour Herald, April 14)
Iowa’s flag calls back to when the land was claimed by the French in the colonial period, although their influence in the area was minimal (but: “Des Moines”). It ended in 1762, when Spain took control, save for a short period at the turn of the 19th century just long enough for France to retake control and Napoleon to sell it.
Detractors aside, we should all be able to agree on one good thing about the Iowa flag: It’s not a blue background with a state seal in the center.