KYKentucky State Symbols

The symbol Kentucky is known by is not on any official list. Bluegrass, the pasture grass whose seed heads take on a blue cast in spring, gave the state its nickname and its most famous landscape, the limestone-fed horse country around Lexington. What the Commonwealth did make official is a set of symbols drawn from the same ground: the thoroughbred horse, coal, the Kentucky agate, a freshwater pearl, and a handshake between a frontiersman and a statesman that appears on the flag of every state building.

Official state symbols

What is on the Kentucky state flag

Kentucky adopted its flag in 1918. It is a navy blue field with the state seal in the middle, wreathed below by two sprays of goldenrod, the state flower. Above the seal, in an arc, are the words "Commonwealth of Kentucky," a reminder that Kentucky is one of four states that call themselves a commonwealth rather than a state.

The seal on the flag shows two men clasping hands. One wears buckskin, the other a formal frock coat, and the motto "United we stand, divided we fall" circles them. Almost everyone identifies them as Daniel Boone and Henry Clay. That reading is folklore. The 1792 legislature specified only "two friends embracing," meant to represent the frontier settler and the statesman standing together, and no names were ever attached in law.

The seal, the motto and where the words came from

The General Assembly created the seal in 1792, the year Kentucky separated from Virginia and became the fifteenth state, and directed Governor Isaac Shelby to have one cut. The motto around it is widely traced to "The Liberty Song," a 1768 pre-Revolutionary lyric by John Dickinson containing the line about standing united and falling divided. Kentucky put the phrase on its seal in 1792 but did not formally name it the state motto by statute until 1942.

In 2002 the legislature added a second, Latin motto, Deo gratiam habeamus, "let us be grateful to God," which is why Kentucky is one of the few states carrying two official mottos at once. The state song, Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home," was adopted in 1928; the General Assembly revised its lyrics in 1986 to remove a racial slur, and the version sung before the Kentucky Derby each May is the amended one.

Symbols that surprise people

• Kentucky has an official silverware pattern. The Georgetown pattern, "Old Kentucky Bluegrass," was designated in 1996, making Kentucky one of the very few states with an official flatware design.
• Clogging is the state dance. Adopted in 1990, the Appalachian percussive step dance beat out square dancing, which most states chose instead.
• The state tree was swapped. The Kentucky coffeetree held the title from 1976 until 1994, when the General Assembly replaced it with the tulip poplar on the grounds that the tulip poplar was the tree pioneers actually built and traveled with.
• Coal is a symbol, not just an industry. Coal became the official state mineral in 1998, while the Kentucky agate, a banded red and black stone found in creek gravels in Estill and Powell counties, became the state rock in 2000.
• The state gemstone comes from a river mussel. The freshwater pearl, adopted in 1986, is produced by mussels in Kentucky's rivers rather than mined.

Neighboring states and more Kentucky pages