Maine Will Vote on a New State Flag

For more than a century, Maine’s state flag has been a bit cluttered.

Against a blue backdrop, it depicts a farmer and a sailor standing on either side of an emblem that shows a moose beneath a pine tree. A star appears at the top, along with the state motto, “Dirigo,” Latin for “I lead.”

This week, Maine announced the winner of a flag redesign contest that state residents will be able to vote on this fall.

Out of more than 400 submissions, the winning flag came from Adam Lemire, an architect from Gardiner, a town of roughly 6,000 residents in Kennebec County. Mr. Lemire’s minimalistic design shows an eastern white pine and a blue North Star against an off-white background.

Those who entered the contest were asked to follow guidelines that would make their designs similar to the state’s original flag, known as the Pine Tree Flag, which was used in the first decade of the 20th century.

Maine’s old flag has experienced a wave of popularity since the state’s 2020 bicentennial celebration, appearing on hats, T-shirts, tote bags and license plates. Mr. Lemire retained the simplicity of the original design while putting his own spin on the pine.

“For my submission, I thought it appropriate to select Maine’s state tree, the eastern white pine,” he said in a statement. “The design is based on those I observed in Capital Park and Viles Arboretum while on walks with my 3-year-old son. The final design is primarily based on an eastern white pine in Governor’s Grove at Viles Arboretum. There are 16 branches because there are 16 counties in Maine.”

The flag redesign contest was set in motion because of a state law that passed last year, “An Act to Restore the Former State of Maine Flag.” The competition’s brief stipulated that designs should be “buff, charged with the emblem of the state, a pine tree proper, in the center, and the North Star, a mullet of five points, in blue in the upper corner.”

A news release from Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, noted that the advisory committee included Republican and Democratic lawmakers, a state archivist, a state historian and a retired journalist.

Mr. Lemire’s design, she said, “stood out as a beautiful, faithful representation of an eastern white pine tree proper. Should voters vote yes to Question 5 in November, we will have a beautiful state flag that honors our past and our future.”

The winning design drew responses in Maine news outlets and online.

As one commenter put it in a social media post, “This would make one hell of an emo album cover.”

Another said, “No lobster?”

The Bangor Daily News published a roundup of rejected submissions. One that strayed from the brief showed the action film star Chuck Norris standing in front of a pine, weapons in hand. Another featured a humanoid lobster and the word “Maine” scrawled in childish script.

In a phone interview, Stuart Kestenbaum, a former Maine poet laureate, considered the contest’s winning design.

“The old flag has great imagery, like the farmer and the sailor but, as others have pointed out, it looks like so many other flags,” Mr. Kestenbaum said. “People have rediscovered the 1901 flag in recent years, so there’s a sense of renewal about it.”

“We’re the Pine Tree State,” he continued. “Every state is special, but when you think about Maine, you really think about a sense of place, which is so important here. This new design does have a sense of place to it.”