Des Moines County, Iowa (U.S.)

Last modified: 2016-02-27 by rick wyatt
Keywords: des moines county | iowa |
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• Current flag not known
• Flag used at sesquicentennial celebrations

- indicates flag is known.
- indicates it is reported that there is no known flag.

Municipal flags in Des Moines County:

• Burlington

See also:

• County and Municipal flags of Iowa
• Iowa
• United States of America

Flag used at sesquicentennial celebrations

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 17 December 2010

Back in 2002, the Iowa State Association of Counties website hosted an account of each county's history, signed by its County Recorder, and illustrated with a black and white flag image. It is not clear whether these flag images were provided by the county administration or not.

Archived copies of the pages about Des Moines County is still at web.archive.org/web/20031003012858 and
web.archive.org/web/20030821122149. It is a ~3:5 plain light (white) flag showing a large emblem drawn in a single darker shade. This emblem consists of the words "Des Moines County", set in slender sans-serif capitals, atop a very stylized county map: This shows the squarish outline of the county territory filled with rows of iconic representations of the local economy limited at the fly side (i.e., east - no idea about the reverse) with a wide wavy solid outline of the Mississippi River bleeding into the bottom edge. The icon rows are, from the top:

• Barn and silo outlines and four corn stalk in a row, repeated 3 times.
• Cattle and poultry, seen from the side in solid outline, facing the fly in a single file, thus sorted in imperfect pattern: Cow, calf, pig, piglet, hen, chick, cow, calf, pig, chick. (Pig and chick are of the supersize variety.)
• A two rows of bricks, solid with mortar gap showing the background, in the iconic staggered arrangement, 7 over 6 complete bricks.
• City skyline outlined with solid windows, three repeats, the middle one flipped, the fly side one with one chopped off tower roof.
• Riverine items facing the fly in realistic solid outline: Paddle steamer, pike (?), seagull (?), loon, patrol boat (?), and windsurfer.
• Industry and society icons: Factory, tractor with backhoe and front loader bucket, the same factory flipped, and a stylized fountain with two stick figures hand dipping.

The booklet [u9s03b] shows a color photo (1st and 2nd images of the 2nd row of page 4): The flag background is indeed white, but the emblem uses four different colors: The river is light blue, the lettering is red, and the corn stalks are green - all other elements are black.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 17 December 2010