US State Flags with Sun Symbols and Sunbursts

New Mexico's flag carries a red Zia Pueblo sun symbol on a golden yellow field. The Zia symbol consists of a central circle with four groups of four rays radiating outward in four directions — 16 rays in total. The design has no state name, no seal, no text of any kind.

The Zia symbol is sacred to the Zia Pueblo people of New Mexico. It represents the sun, with the four groups of rays signifying the four sacred obligations: the four directions (north, south, east, west), the four seasons, the four stages of life, and the four times of day (morning, noon, evening, night). The number four itself is sacred in Zia spiritual tradition.

New Mexico adopted the symbol after a 1920 state flag competition produced a design that the New Mexico Archaeological Society felt was not distinctive enough. Dr. Harry Mera designed the current flag in 1920; it was officially adopted in 1925. The Zia Pueblo have repeatedly asked that the symbol be treated with cultural respect. New Mexico law does not formally restrict its use, but the state officially acknowledges the symbol's sacred origin.

New Mexico's flag consistently appears at or near the top of vexillological rankings for US state flags. The reasons are textbook flag design: one distinctive symbol, strong color contrast (red on gold), no text, no seal, and a shape that is readable at any distance and in any size — simple, meaningful, and impossible to confuse with any other flag.

Arizona's flag shows 13 alternating red and gold rays radiating from a copper star at the center, on the upper half of the flag. The lower half is a solid blue field matching the blue of the US flag. The rays represent the setting desert sun and also reference the 13 original colonies — a deliberate double meaning.

The copper five-pointed star at the center represents Arizona's copper mining industry. Arizona produces more copper than any other US state and accounted for roughly 70% of US copper production when the flag was adopted in 1917. The design was created by US Army Colonel Charles Harris for Arizona's rifle team competing at the 1910 National Rifle Championship in Ohio.

The combination of the rays and the copper star gives Arizona's flag a strong visual identity that sits between a sun flag and a star flag — the rays read as sunburst, but the central element is a five-pointed copper star.

South Dakota's current flag (adopted 1992) shows the state seal centered on a sky-blue field, surrounded by a gold sunburst design. The flag also carries the state nickname 'The Mount Rushmore State' in gold text.

The sunburst was added to distinguish South Dakota's flag from the plain seal-on-blue designs common among US states. South Dakota's nickname 'The Sunshine State of America' (one of its older nicknames, predating Florida's use of the same phrase) informed the choice of a golden sunburst as the distinctive design element.

South Dakota updated its flag from an earlier design (which used a different sunburst configuration) in 1992, when it also changed the state nickname on the flag. The gold sunburst is the most distinctive element of the current design.