RIRhode Island State Symbols

Rhode Island's defining symbol is the anchor, paired with the single word Hope. Both go back to the colonial seal of 1664, and the imagery is usually traced to Hebrews 6:19, which describes hope as an anchor of the soul. Roger Williams founded the colony as a refuge for people driven out of Massachusetts Bay for their beliefs, and the founders picked a motto that fitted a settlement with no guarantees. Hope is still the shortest state motto in the country, and the anchor still sits at the centre of the flag, the seal and the state's coat of arms.

Official state symbols

What is on the Rhode Island state flag

The Rhode Island flag is a white field with a gold anchor in the centre. Thirteen gold five-pointed stars form a circle around the anchor, and a blue ribbon runs beneath it carrying the word HOPE in gold letters. The flag is traditionally finished with a gold fringe, which is unusual among state flags.

The thirteen stars do double duty. They stand for the thirteen original colonies, and they also mark Rhode Island's own position as the thirteenth and last of them to ratify the Constitution, which it did on 29 May 1790 and only after the other twelve had already joined. The anchor is older than the flag by more than two centuries, taken from the seal the General Assembly adopted in 1664. The present flag was fixed by statute in 1897; earlier Rhode Island banners had used a blue field with the anchor and thirteen stars.

The seal, the name and the 2020 vote

The state seal is the anchor again, with Hope arched above it, ringed by the state's formal name and the date 1636, the year Roger Williams established Providence. For most of the state's history that ring read "Seal of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations", the longest official name of any state despite Rhode Island being the smallest at about 1,045 square miles.

In November 2020 voters approved a constitutional amendment striking "and Providence Plantations" from the official name, on the argument that the word plantations carried an association with slavery that the state should not keep on its documents. The legal name is now simply the State of Rhode Island, and the seal and letterhead were updated to match. The word Hope and the anchor were untouched by the change.

Symbols that surprise people

• An official state drink that is not water or milk. Coffee milk, made by stirring sweetened coffee syrup into cold milk, was adopted in 1993 after beating out Del's frozen lemonade in the legislature.
• An official state appetizer. Calamari, adopted in 2014, reflects a squid fishery landed largely at Point Judith. The dish got a national audience during the 2020 Democratic convention roll call.
• A stone found nowhere else. Cumberlandite, the state rock, occurs naturally in only one significant deposit on earth, an old iron mine site in Cumberland. It is magnetic and dark with pale crystals.
• A state bird that is a farm chicken. The Rhode Island Red was bred in Little Compton in the 1850s and named state bird in 1954. A stone monument in the Adamsville village green honours the breed.
• A carousel as official folk art. The Charles I. D. Looff carousel at Crescent Park in East Providence, built by the Danish carver in the 1890s, was designated the state's American folk art symbol in 1985.

Symbols of neighbouring states

More about Rhode Island