WVWest Virginia State Symbols

Montani semper liberi, "mountaineers are always free," is the symbol West Virginians reach for first, and it was chosen in the same season the state was created. The legislature adopted it in 1863 along with the seal, weeks after the western counties broke from Virginia and entered the Union as a separate state in the middle of the Civil War. The motto is a claim about why the state exists, not a description of the terrain, though the terrain backs it up: West Virginia has the highest mean elevation of any state east of the Mississippi, which is where "the Mountain State" comes from.

Official state symbols

The rhododendron is the oldest of them. Schoolchildren and the public voted for it in 1902 and the legislature confirmed the result the following year, which makes it one of the earliest state flowers picked by popular ballot anywhere in the country.

What is on the West Virginia state flag

A plain white field with a strip of blue running all the way round the edge, and the state coat of arms in the middle. Above the arms an unfurled red ribbon reads "State of West Virginia." Below and around them sits a wreath of rhododendron, the state flower, in full bloom. The white stands for purity and the blue border for the Union the new state joined. The legislature adopted this version on 7 March 1929, after two earlier attempts. The 1905 flag had a rhododendron sprig on one side and the arms on the other, which meant it had to be made as two flags sewn together, and the 1907 revision was little better. The 1929 design put the same image on both faces and settled the matter.

The seal, and the two men on it

Joseph H. Diss Debar, a Swiss-born artist who had settled in Doddridge County and later became the state's first commissioner of immigration, designed the seal in 1863. At its centre stands a large boulder cut with the date 20 June 1863, the day statehood took effect. To the left a farmer holds an axe and stands beside a plough and a sheaf of wheat. To the right a miner holds a pickaxe with an anvil and a sledgehammer at his feet, the two industries the new state was built on. In front of the rock lie two hunters' rifles laid crosswise with a Phrygian liberty cap resting on them, meaning that the freedom in the motto was won by arms and will be kept the same way. The words "State of West Virginia" and Montani Semper Liberi ring the outer edge.

Symbols that surprise people

• "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is an official state song. The John Denver track was added in 2014, joining three songs already adopted together in 1963, so West Virginia now has four.
• The state fruit was discovered on a hillside in Clay County. Anderson Mullins found the original Golden Delicious tree as a chance seedling on his farm, and Stark Brothers Nursery bought the rights to it in 1914.
• The state fossil was described by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wrote up the giant claw bones found in a Greenbrier County saltpetre cave in 1797, and the animal was later named Megalonyx jeffersonii after him.
• There is an official state soil. Monongahela silt loam, a deep terrace soil found on old river benches, was designated in 1997.
• The state colours are a university's colours. Old gold and blue, adopted in 1963, are the same pair West Virginia University has used since the 1890s.

Neighbouring states' symbols

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