US City
Sioux Falls had no flag at all until 2018. The one it has now was drawn by a resident, chosen by a citizens’ committee and flown by residents before the council ever approved it. Its colours come from two places: the flag of South Dakota, and the pink stone the city is built of.
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| City | Sioux Falls, South Dakota |
|---|---|
| Flag | A rising zigzag of white and blue lines between blue and pinkish-red fields, a yellow sun at the upper hoist; 3:5 |
| Adopted | 10 July 2018, unanimously |
| Designer | Max Rabkin, who released it into the public domain |
| NAVA 2022 survey | 18th of 312 — grade A |
Flag of Sioux Falls — a rising zigzag of thin white and blue lines between a blue upper field and a pinkish-red lower field, with a yellow sun at the upper hoist. The zigzag is the falls of the Big Sioux River and rises for the growth of the city; the pinkish-red is Sioux quartzite. Adopted 10 July 2018.
Four elements and no words. Proportions 3:5.
Together the red, white and blue recall the national flag, while the shades and the arrangement belong to nobody else.
Sioux quartzite is a hard pinkish-red stone quarried at Sioux Falls, and many of the city’s important early buildings are made of it. The lower half of the flag is the colour of the rock the city is built from. Civic colours are usually borrowed from a state or national flag, or simply chosen; this one comes from a quarry.
Until 2018 the city had no flag. In 2014 a group of residents — The Committee to Establish a Suitable Flying Banner for the City of Sioux Falls — ran a public contest, and the design by Max Rabkin won with both the expert panel and the public. People began flying it before the city had adopted anything, and it became known as the People’s Flag. The council made it official, unanimously, on 10 July 2018. Rabkin had already released it into the public domain.
A municipal seal for Sioux Falls exists, but no published description of it could be found — no blazon, no ordinance text, no account of what it shows. This page therefore does not describe it: reading an emblem off a picture is how errors enter an atlas. Here, unusually, it is the flag that is fully documented and the seal that is not.
No published description of the seal of Sioux Falls on record yet.
Know of one — an ordinance, a code section, a city archive page? Tell us on Discord.
The zigzag of white and blue lines is the falls of the Big Sioux River, rising for the city’s growth. The blue and the yellow sun come from the flag of South Dakota, and the pinkish-red is Sioux quartzite, the local building stone.
A hard pinkish-red stone quarried at Sioux Falls and used in many of the city’s early public buildings. The lower half of the flag takes its colour from it.
Max Rabkin, whose design won a public contest run by a citizens’ committee in 2014. He released it into the public domain.
On 10 July 2018, by a unanimous vote of the City Council, after residents had been flying it unofficially for several years.
A note on method. The flag is described from the published descriptions, not from the drawing. The city seal is not described: a seal exists, but no published account of its design was found.
Last reviewed by the Emblema Mundi editorial team on 30 September 2026.