MOMissouri State Symbols

Missouri's most recognisable symbol was never voted on. The Show-Me State nickname comes from a line Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver used in an 1899 speech in Philadelphia, telling his audience that frothy eloquence neither convinced nor satisfied him and that, being from Missouri, they had to show him. The legislature has never made it official, yet it has been stamped on Missouri licence plates since 1980 and it defines how the state describes itself.

Official state symbols

What is on the Missouri state flag

Three horizontal bands, red on top, white in the middle, blue at the bottom, carry the state seal in a circle at the centre. The colours were chosen to mark Missouri's French colonial past as much as its place in the Union, and are commonly read as red for valour, white for purity and blue for vigilance, permanency and justice. Around the seal runs a blue band holding 24 white stars, because Missouri was admitted as the 24th state in 1821.

The flag was designed by Marie Elizabeth Oliver of Cape Girardeau, who spent years researching and sewing prototypes with the Daughters of the American Revolution before the General Assembly adopted her design on 22 March 1913. An earlier bill had failed when the original hand-sewn flag was destroyed in a Capitol fire.

The state seal at the centre

Judge Robert William Wells designed the seal, adopted on 11 January 1822, less than a year after statehood. Two grizzly bears stand as supporters, symbols of strength and bravery, holding a shield split down the middle. The right half carries the arms of the United States, the eagle with olive branch and arrows, and the left half carries a Missouri grizzly and a crescent moon. The crescent stands for the state's small population at the time and the growth expected of it. A belt around the shield reads "United We Stand, Divided We Fall," a helmet above signals state sovereignty, and the Roman numerals MDCCCXX record 1820, the year the constitution was drafted. The Latin motto and 24 stars complete it.

Symbols that surprise people

• An official state exercise. Missouri named the jumping jack in 2014, honouring General John J. Pershing of Laclede, who is credited with drilling the movement into cadets at West Point.
• The ice cream cone as state dessert. Adopted in 2008 and tied to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, where the rolled waffle cone was popularised.
• A fossil chosen by Girl Scouts. The crinoid became state fossil in 1989 after a multi-year lobbying effort by a Lee's Summit Girl Scout troop.
• Two separate rock designations. Galena, the lead ore that made Missouri the country's leading lead producer, is the state mineral, while mozarkite, a colourful chert from the Lincoln area, is the state rock. Both passed in 1967.
• A mule and a fox trotter. The Missouri mule, named state animal in 1995, hauled freight west along the Santa Fe Trail, and the Missouri Fox Trotting Horse, bred in the Ozarks for a gait smooth enough to ride all day, became the state horse in 2002.

Symbols of bordering states

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