Flags of Salt Lake City

There are four flags of Salt Lake City. The primary one, the Sego Flag, consists of two horizontal bars of blue and white with a sego lily in the canton. It was adopted in 2020 after a city-wide contest to replace a previous flag. The blue and white stripes symbolize the water and salt of the Great Salt Lake, on the shores of which the city stands. Additionally, the white recalls the Winter Olympics, which were held in Salt Lake City in 2002. Sego is the state flower of Utah, recognized for its resistance to arid climate and the importance of the plant's edible bulbs to Shoshone and Latter-day Saint pioneers. Three sego petals in the flag refer to the fact that Salt Lake City is the only state capital with a three-word name. The golden center of the sego is intended to symbolize the future of the city.<ref name="auto1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> This is the fourth flag in the history of the city.

In May 2025, the city council approved mayor Erin Mendenhall's designs for three new city flags:

• the Sego Celebration Flag, based on the Juneteenth flag;<ref name="auto">Template:Cite news</ref>

Each is identical to the flag it was based on, except for the addition of a sego lily in the canton.<ref name="auto2"/> The flags were adopted in response to a new state law restricting the flying of the flags they were based on.<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>

History

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The first city flag was made in 1854 and was described as "elegant banner of this city whereon is inscribed 'Municipality, Order, Justice, G.S.L. city'."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The second adopted city flag was designed in 1963 by J. Rulon Hales, the winner of a contest run by the Deseret News. The first version of the flag was made by art students from Highland High School and officially adopted for use on November 13, 1969.<ref name="NAVA" /><ref>Template:Cite news Template:Free access</ref> It included seagulls, pioneers, a covered wagon, and the sun rising over the Wasatch Mountains in the middle of a white background.<ref name="NAVA">Template:Cite book</ref> The center was in the general shape of a beehive, which is a symbol of industry and relates to the founding of Salt Lake City and its Latter-day Saint heritage.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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The third design of the flag was approved on October 4, 2006, by the Salt Lake City Council.<ref name="skyline">Template:Cite news</ref> Rocky Anderson, the mayor of Salt Lake City at the time, had sponsored a contest in 2004 to redesign the flag. Anderson argued that the old flag was too exclusive, focused entirely on the city's Latter-day Saint heritage, and was "visually boring".<ref name="skyline"/>

The contest, which received more than 50 entries, did not produce any designs that the city council felt had the "symbolic visuals that could be associated with Salt Lake City".<ref name="designs">Template:Cite news</ref> They then formed a subcommittee to work with the mayor's office to create new designs for the flag.<ref name="designs" /> The final design was approved with a 4–2 margin.<ref name="skyline"/>

In May 2020, the city government opened a two-month contest to redesign the flag with a $3,000 prize for the winning entry. The city received over 600 design entries, of which eight finalists were selected in July by the Flag Design Review Committee for public review.<ref name="Tribune">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="auto1"/> The winning design, announced in September 2020, was created through the merger of two finalists created by Arianna Meinking and Elio Kennedy-Yoon from West High School.<ref name="Tribune"/> The design features a sego lily, the Utah state flower, in the canton amidst horizontal fields of blue and white. It was sent to the city council for consideration with the endorsement of mayor Erin Mendenhall and adopted on October 6, 2020.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• Flag of Utah
• Flag of Trenton, Georgia, flag adopted in response to the ban on displaying the old state flag

External links

• Official City flag website