Every item held by the Historical Society of North Dakota for display at the state Heritage Center has a story, including hundreds of flags that historians and conservators go to great lengths to protect.
“You can get a huge sense of pride from flags and they symbolize what you believe, but also symbolize what organizations you are a part of,” said Lori Nohner, research historian for the State Historical Society of North Dakota. “You can learn a lot from the histories of flags.”
Nohner said the Historical Society has about 340 flags in the collection, which includes about 150 military flags and pennants from different service units with North Dakota ties.
Sen. Dick Dever, R-Bismarck, commander of the Bismarck-area AMVETS, said the beginning of the Pledge of Allegiance is to the flag, but also to the republic “for which it stands.”
“It’s not just a piece of cloth. It represents our whole country,” Dever said. “I didn’t serve in battle so I have indicated that I have served on the shoulders of heroes. And the guys that did serve, that flag is everything to them, as it is to me because of them.”
One flag in the museum’s collection is a replica 15-star American flag that would have been similar to one flown between 1795 and 1818, Nohner said. The 15-star field represented the original 13 colonies and the newly added states to the union, Vermont and Kentucky.
A similar flag would have been flown over a newly completed Fort Mandan for the first time on Christmas Day in 1804 and was the same type of flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the, “The Star Spangled Banner,” during the War of 1812 in what would become the national anthem of the United States.
Nohner said her favorite flag in the collection belonged to Sara Sand of Grand Forks who served as a nurse at Base Hospital 60 in the Meuse-Argonne sector of France during World War I. Sand left a note with the 48-star, cotton flag that said the flag was hung in her company barracks at Camp Jackson in South Carolina and her barracks in France.
“You can see her uniform up on exhibit in the Inspiration Gallery,” she said. Sand served during the war with a Bismarck-area doctor, Dr. E.P. Quain, who founded the Quain and Ramstad Clinic in 1902, Nohner said. The Bismarck clinic was considered one of the oldest medical clinics in the United States and would eventually become Sanford Medical Center.
In the 1930s, Joe Wolf of Linton wanted to make a statement about low crop prices during the Great Depression and crafted a hand-painted flag made out of 5,340 kernels of wheat. Wolf wrote a description of his crafting process on the reverse side of the flag in which he said the flag took more than 80 hours to finish.
Another flag in the Historical Society’s collection is an unofficial flag, Nohner said. The 39-star flag is known as “the flag that never flew,” and was created prior to 1889, the year North Dakota and South Dakota became states.
“Flag manufacturers believed that the Dakotas were going to come into the union as one state and they didn’t,” she said. “So it was never an official flag, but they made enough of them that they still exist today.”
The Historical Society also has a small flag from 1919 in its collection that is designed to be waved by hand with written text on the flag saying “signing of big bills.”
“The big bills they are talking about is when they created the Bank of North Dakota, the North Dakota Mill and Elevator and the state Industrial Commission,” Nohner said. “All of those Nonpartisan League institutions are still active in our state today and are now very unique to North Dakota.”
Nohner said the museum recently acquired a North Dakota state flag that was taken to space by North Dakota astronaut James Buchli in 1985.
“In our records we have a field that says, ‘Where did he use it?’ and it says, ‘Outer space,’” she said. “He gifted it to the historical society when he was inducted into the Roughrider Hall of Fame.”
A North Dakota state flag that was taken into space by North Dakota astronaut James Buchli rests in a drawer of the collections area of the North Dakota Heritage Center on June 30, 2025 after being gifted by Buchli to then-Gov. Doug Burgum following his induction into the Roughrider Hall of Fame. (Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)
Another famed flag in the museum’s collection is the decommissioning flag from the USS Gurke, a Navy destroyer in service from 1945 to 1976 that was named after a World War II medal of honor recipient and Neche-native Henry Gurke.
“They gifted the decommissioning flag to his mom and his mom gifted it to us,” Nohner said.
Another service flag in the museum’s collection was originally given to families of service members who were fighting in World War I and World War II. Nohner said families would hang these pennants in their windows with a blue star indicating someone in their family was fighting in the conflict. Those blue stars were made into gold stars, if the service member died during the war.
Nohner said the gold star pennant in their collection belonged to Mable Guy who lost her son James Guy after he died in a prisoner of war camp during World War II. Mable Guy also had a pennant with three blue stars on it to represent her three sons who fought during the war, one of her sons was former North Dakota Gov. William Guy.
Flags will be featured prominently in Independence Day parades and celebrations across North Dakota.
Dever said the proper way to honor a passing flag is a hand salute for military veterans or placing a hand over the heart to honor the first flag in a procession.
“I think flags start as just a physical object, but they never end that way,” Nohner said. “They always become a personal identity symbol. They are more than what they look like, they are what they mean to you.”
Tips for preserving flags
Lori Nohner said the State Historical Society of North Dakota does not restore flags at the Heritage Center, but they do preserve them to the best of their ability.
“Our intended purpose is to keep it in good condition for hundreds and hundreds of years,” Nohner said.
She offered some guidelines for anyone wanting to preserve flags
Climate control: Do not leave items in the sun, or nail them to a wall. Do not put the items in an attic, or a humid basement.
“If it’s a comfortable temperature for you, it’s going to be a comfortable temperature for your historic treasures,” she said.
She also advised against vacuum-sealing. “I think you are asking for trouble when you create, kind of, a micro climate so you never know if humidity is going to get in there, and it’s going to get wet and moldy,” Nohner said.
Folding vs. flat: Folding flags in a ceremonial triangle can be a good way to store the flags, but with more fragile materials, such as silk, covering them with paper to keep them out of the light and laying them out flat are the best ways to care for those items.
Rolling a flag tightly around a pole is not advised, but, if rolling is necessary, Nohner suggests wrapping the flag loosely around a wider than normal tube to limit the stress on the fabric.
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