Official and Traditional Colors of New Jersey

The origin of New Jersey's state colors is unique among American state color histories: they were personally chosen by George Washington during the Revolutionary War. On September 14, 1779, while commanding the Continental Army, Washington ordered that the uniform coats of the New Jersey Continental Line be dark (Jersey) blue, with buff facings. This was a deliberate honor — buff-colored facings had until that point been reserved exclusively for Washington's own uniform and the uniforms of other Continental Army generals and their aides-de-camp. By extending buff facings to New Jersey's regiments, Washington conferred a distinction previously held only by the highest ranks of the Continental Army. On February 14, 1780, the Continental War Officers in Philadelphia then directed that the uniform coat facings of all regiments should match the background color of each regiment's state flag, connecting the uniform colors directly to what became the state's flag palette. New Jersey adopted these military colors as its official state flag in 1896 and formally codified them as official state colors in 1965, while the civic message remained aligned with New Jersey's motto.

Historians and vexillologists have offered a compelling explanation for why Washington selected specifically dark blue and buff for the New Jersey and New York Continental regiments: both states had been originally settled by the Dutch, and dark blue and buff were historically identified with the Holland (Netherlands) national palette. Washington, who was deeply attentive to historical symbolism, may have selected these colors specifically to honor the Dutch heritage of the two original Dutch settlements — New Amsterdam (New York) and New Jersey — that had become the states whose regiments he was outfitting. This Dutch connection gives New Jersey's state colors one of the most historically layered origins of any American state, linking the Revolutionary War buff-and-blue to the earlier colonial period of Dutch settlement that began in the 1620s and to identity narratives on the Garden State page.

The buff facing color on Continental Army uniforms had a specific heraldic function in the 18th-century military context. In the Continental Army's uniform regulations, the color of a coat's facings — the contrasting cloth on lapels, cuffs, and collar — indicated a soldier's regimental and sometimes national affiliation. Buff facings were specifically designated for General Washington and other senior Continental generals, making the color a visual marker of the highest military authority. When Washington extended buff facings to New Jersey's troops in September 1779, he was sharing the color of his own uniform with them — a gesture of distinction that New Jersey's soldiers wore on every subsequent engagement of the Revolutionary War. The buff color's warm, golden-yellow tone was also visually distinctive on the battlefield, allowing New Jersey's regiments to be identified at a distance in the confused visual environment of 18th-century warfare. New Jersey's state flag, adopted in 1896, uses buff as the entire flag background — the only state flag in the country with a buff field — making the Washington connection visible on every New Jersey flag flown today.

Jersey Blue's shade — a royal blue specified as Cable No. 70087 with hexadecimal value #2484C6 — connects to both Dutch colonial heritage and Revolutionary War identity. The blue is specifically called Jersey Blue rather than simply blue, a named shade that reflects the color's unique association with New Jersey's military and state identity since 1779. In the Revolutionary War context, the dark blue coat was the foundation of the Continental Army uniform — the primary color before buff facings were added — and the blue of New Jersey's regiments became inseparable from their identity as one of Washington's most trusted forces during the long New Jersey campaigns of 1776-1780. Washington's New Jersey headquarters at Jockey Hollow in Morristown, where he chose the state's colors, is now preserved as Morristown National Historical Park, the country's first national historical park, established in 1933.