Alaska State Flag T-Shirt

The official flag of Alaska State features The Big Dipper or the Ursa Major or Great Bear constellation. The Big Dipper symbolizes strength, while the Polaris symbolizes Alaska’s northern location and the “ever-constant star for the mariner, the explorer, hunter, trapper, prospector, woodsman, and the surveyor” according to the legislation.  Did you know that the creator of the flag was a 13-year-old orphan named Benny Benson? He was living in an orphanage in Seward Alaska and he lost his mother to pneumonia at the early age of 3. So he and his brother were sent to an orphanage in Unalaska. In January 1927, the Territorial Governor of Alaska asked the Alaska American Legion to hold a contest open for all Alaskan kids to design a flag for the state. And the contest was Benny Benson who was a seventh-grader at a territorial school at Seward. Benny chose straightforward symbols that will strike Alaskans regardless of age and background. He even wrote an explanation for his design and said