Duluth Could Soon Get a New City Flag

Flag enthusiasts have been submitting designs

DULUTH, Minn. – Duluth could soon be getting a new city flag.

Many people don’t know that Duluth has a city flag. Even fewer people could tell you what that flag looks like. But soon, a process could begin to design a new one and the community is being asked to help.

The city first adopted their current flag in 1979, but the marker is hardly identifiable and hangs in very few spots around town.

“You’ve put a bunch of stuff on here but there isn’t necessarily a big story to it, it doesn’t connect all the people, I have no idea why we have this number of stars versus something else,” said Duluth Mayor Emily Larson.

Mayor Larson thinks it might be time to create a new flag that better represents the city.

“A lot of communities that go through that process, you end up having people printing t–shirts with that flag or it becomes a part of the team uniforms or they have hats. It’s like people wear their community,” said Mayor Larson.

Duluthians like Nicky Sunsdahl have already made designs.

“We just need to have some civic pride and be better,” said Sunsdahl. “The best if possible.”

Sunsdahl’s “Tilt Town” flag is an abstract representation of Duluth’s landscape. The green represents the city and hill, the blue represents Lake Superior and other waterways, and the white represents the sky.

“People might say we should have a boat on the water and we should have Enger Tower or maybe we should have some writing and that’s not really what a flag is meant to serve,” said Sunsdahl.

He says flags should be minimalist and easy to identify from a long distance.

“That’s why people when they climb Mount Everest, they plant the flag,” said Sunsdahl. “When we go to the moon, we plant the flag because it’s so far away. So when you see this floating in on a big laker, you’ll say ‘I can see the green triangle, I see the blue stripe at the bottom, white field, it’s got to be Duluth’s flag.'”

Sunsdahl has started a tilt town flag grassroots committee and hopes his design can become the “people’s flag” before a new one is adopted by the city.

Tilt town flag stickers are available at Beaner’s, Hemlocks Leatherworks, and Adeline, Inc.

Mayor Larson said a community process to create and adopt a new flag could begin by this fall.