NMNew Mexico State Symbols

New Mexico's official symbols

New Mexico is recognised first by its flag, a red Zia sun on a field of gold. The sun sign was copied from a nineteenth century water jar made at Zia Pueblo, and the red and gold are the colours Spain carried into the Rio Grande valley under Isabella of Castile. The rest of the state's symbols work the same way, stacking Pueblo, Spanish and frontier history on top of high desert ecology. The roadrunner, the pinon, the yucca and the turquoise can all be found within an hour's drive of Santa Fe.

What is on the New Mexico state flag

The flag is a single red Zia symbol centred on a gold field, with no lettering, no seal and no border. The Zia is a circle with four groups of four rays. In Zia Pueblo tradition the number four carries the four directions, the four seasons, the four parts of the day from sunrise to night, and the four stages of a life from childhood to old age, all bound by the circle of life itself.

The design came out of a 1920s contest run by the Daughters of the American Revolution to replace an earlier flag that was mostly a miniature US flag with the state seal on it. Santa Fe archaeologist Harry Mera submitted the winning entry in 1925 and his wife Reba stitched the first flag. The red and gold are the royal colours of Spain, a nod to the conquistadors who reached the region in 1540. The result is one of only a handful of state flags carrying no writing at all, and it regularly tops surveys of American flag design.

The state seal

The seal shows an American bald eagle with its wings spread over a smaller Mexican brown eagle that grips a snake in its beak and a cactus in its talons. The larger bird sheltering the smaller one marks the 1846 change of sovereignty, when the territory passed from Mexico to the United States. The Latin motto below, Crescit eundo, comes from the Roman poet Lucretius, who used it to describe a thunderbolt gathering force as it travels. New Mexico's territorial legislature adopted the phrase in 1887 and the state kept it, with the date 1912 marking statehood added around the design.

Symbols that surprise people

• An official state question. Since 1996 the state question has been "Red or green?", the phrase a waiter uses to ask which chile sauce you want. Answering "Christmas" gets you both.
• A state cookie. The bizcochito, an anise and cinnamon shortbread rolled in sugar, was adopted in 1989 and is still baked for weddings and Christmas.
• A state aircraft. The hot air balloon became an official symbol in 2005, in honour of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
• Official neckwear. The bolo tie was named the state tie in 2007 and counts as formal dress in the state legislature.
• A dinosaur fossil. Coelophysis, a slender two-legged predator found by the hundreds at Ghost Ranch near Abiquiu, became the state fossil in 1981.
• A bear with a backstory. The black bear was chosen in 1963 partly because a burned cub rescued in the Capitan Mountains in 1950 became the living Smokey Bear.

More on New Mexico