Montana State Motto: Oro y Plata

Montana's state motto is Oro y Plata, a Spanish phrase meaning Gold and Silver. It was adopted by the Montana Territorial Legislature on February 9, 1865, and formally confirmed by the state legislature on March 2, 1893, after Montana achieved statehood.

The motto connects directly to Montana's nickname, the Treasure State. Gold was discovered in Montana in 1862, and silver followed. The motto captures the two metals that defined the territory's early economy.

Oro is Spanish for gold. Y means and. Plata is Spanish for silver. Together: Gold and Silver.

Spanish mining vocabulary was widely used throughout the American West by the 1860s. Words like placer, bonanza, and plata were part of everyday mining life, carried north from California and Nevada by prospectors who moved from one gold field to the next.

Montana Territory was established on May 26, 1864. That winter, the First Territorial Legislative Assembly met in Bannack. Francis McGee Thompson, a representative from Beaverhead County, proposed the motto and the design for the territorial seal.

Thompson's original draft included a grammatical error: he wrote Oro el Plata. In Spanish, el is a masculine definite article meaning the, not a conjunction. The correct word to connect two nouns is y, meaning and. The error was caught and corrected before Territorial Governor Sidney Edgerton signed the bill into law on February 9, 1865.

Montana became the 41st state on November 8, 1889. The state legislature formally readopted the motto on March 2, 1893, as part of establishing the official state seal. G.R. Metten executed the first engraved state seal that year and was paid $20 for the work.