Maine is the rare state with two flags in circulation: the official one, adopted in 1909, and the one a lot of Mainers apparently wish were official. The 1909 flag is the state coat of arms on blue, with a moose, a pine, a farmer, a sailor, a star, and a Latin motto. Its predecessor, the 1901 original, had a green pine tree and a single blue star on a buff field and nothing else. The old design has spent the last decade colonizing hats, beer cans, and front porches, and in 2024 it forced an actual statewide vote on whether to bring it back. It lost. The story of how a dead flag came that close is the most interesting thing about Maine vexillology.
The 1901 original
Maine adopted its first flag on March 21, 1901, and by the standards of the era it was radical. While other states were hoisting their seals onto blue bunting, Maine's legislature specified a buff field with a pine tree in the center and the North Star in blue at the upper hoist. The pine had been Maine's emblem since colonial times, when the tall white pines of its forests were reserved for Royal Navy masts, and pine tree flags had flown in New England since the Revolution. The star stood for the motto adopted with the state seal in 1820: Dirigo, "I lead," the North Star being the star by which sailors steer.
The flag flew at the 1904 St. Louis world's fair, and then, in 1909, it was gone.
1909: the arms go up the pole
On February 23, 1909, the legislature replaced the buff flag with the current design: the full state coat of arms on a field of blue, specified as the same blue as the United States flag. The motive was commemorative. Maine regiments in the Civil War had carried blue regimental colors bearing the state arms, and with Union veterans aging, the legislature chose a flag in their honor, modeled on the colors they had fought under.
The arms are a dense composition. The shield shows a moose lying at rest beneath a white pine, the state tree. Two supporters flank it: a husbandman resting on a scythe for agriculture, and a seaman resting on an anchor for the maritime trades, the two occupations that built the state. Above the shield are the North Star and a ribbon reading "Dirigo"; below, a banner with MAINE in capitals. The statute, now Title 1, section 206 of the Maine Revised Statutes, sets the odd proportions of 26:33.
As a piece of flag design, it has few defenders. In the North American Vexillological Association's 2001 survey it ranked 60th of 72 flags, in the thick of the seal-on-blue pack it had joined in 1909. From a distance it is another blue flag with a busy disc, distinguishable from New Hampshire's or Vermont's only up close.
The old flag comes back into fashion
The 1901 flag began reappearing in the 2010s, first as a curiosity reproduced by flag enthusiasts, then as a full-blown state fad. Its simplicity is the point: a tree and a star read instantly at any size, on a flag, a sticker, or a can. By the time Maine celebrated its bicentennial in 2020, the "original Maine flag" was a small industry, flown from houses that had never flown the official one. A grassroots movement grew around making the switch official.
The legislature agreed to put it to the voters. A referendum originally aimed at 2023 slipped to 2024, and the state ran a design competition for an official modernized version of the 1901 flag. The winning entry came from Adam Lemire of Gardiner: a buff field, a deep green pine with sixteen branches, one for each Maine county, and a blue North Star in the canton.
Question 5
Question 5 went to voters on November 5, 2024: replace the 1909 flag with Lemire's 1901 revival, yes or no. The campaign was good-natured by referendum standards but genuinely divided. Supporters argued the pine flag was distinctive, historic, and already the flag people actually flew. Opponents ranged from those attached to the coat of arms and its Civil War pedigree to those who disliked the specific redesign, and to voters who simply saw no reason to spend attention on a flag.
The result was not close: roughly 55 percent no to 45 percent yes. The 1909 flag stayed. What the vote settled legally it did not settle culturally, since nothing stops anyone from flying the 1901 flag, and Mainers have carried on doing exactly that. The state now runs a de facto two-flag system, one official and one popular, with the referendum having established only which one gets the capitol flagpole.
A naval ensign too
Maine has one more flag in its locker, and it is a genuine rarity. Since March 16, 1939, the state has had an official merchant and marine flag: a white field with a green pine tree, a fouled anchor, and the words "Dirigo" and "Maine". Only two states maintain a separate naval ensign of this kind, Maine and Massachusetts, a small monument to the era when Maine-built wooden ships and Maine crews were a visible presence in the world's ports. The pine tree, banished from the state flag in 1909, never left the ensign.
References
[1] Maine Revised Statutes, Title 1, § 206, "State flag." https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/1/title1sec206.html
[2] Wikipedia, "Flag of Maine." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Maine
[3] Wikipedia, "2024 Maine Question 5." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Maine_Question_5
[4] Bangor Daily News, "Maine voters reject effort to change state flag back to pine tree design" (November 6, 2024). https://www.bangordailynews.com/2024/11/06/politics/elections/maine-voters-reject-pine-tree-flag-design/
[5] North American Vexillological Association, "2001 State/Provincial Flag Survey." https://nava.org/digital-library/design/surveys/2001-State-Provincial-Flag-Survey.pdf