Posting this amidst a two-week vacation in Freeport, on the Maine coast. I can report that the 1901 Maine flag, with two simple shapes on a plain background, is ubiquitous on souvenir merchandise here. In shop after shop I see it embroidered on caps, screened onto T-shirts, and carved into coasters. People here are proud of the design, and visitors clearly love it too, buying every sort of representation to take back home. I shall be among them.

I do not see the official post-1909 state flag anywhere, with its “DIRIGO” motto and its much busier design, aside from its obligatory installation outside of the Freeport city hall. But that’s the only flag I knew during my part-time childhood and full-time young adulthood as a Mainer in the 1980s and 1990s. The movement to re-establish the 1901 flag only started gaining steam after I moved away in 2000. In 2024 it made it all the way to a general referendum, where it lost a popular vote.

I first saw the 1901 flag last year in my old home city of Bangor, just before that vote. It flew from poles, glowed from windows, and flickered on animated LED signs all over town. I do prefer the updated 2024 design from the referendum, with a more realistically rendered tree—but judging by the shop shelves, Mainers seem to prefer the original, simpler style. I am more struck by how they resoundingly choose this design as the symbol that they show visitors, rather than the flag that’s flown over the state house for longer than any Mainer’s been alive. I was sad to learn of the referendum’s defeat, last year, but cheered to see today that the Mainers who had chosen their true flag have not abandoned their choice.