Official State Seals

Every U.S. state has an official great seal used to authenticate government documents, legislation, and executive orders. State seals are among the oldest official state symbols — Delaware's has been in use since 1777.

Rhode Island's seal design dates to 1647, making it the oldest continuously used seal imagery in the country — more than 130 years before the United States existed.

California's seal features Minerva — the Roman goddess of wisdom — because California was admitted as a full state without a territorial period, just as Minerva was born an adult. The seal was designed at the 1849 Monterey Constitutional Convention.

Virginia's seal, designed in the first weeks of the Revolution (1776), shows the goddess Virtus standing with one foot on the chest of a fallen king. The motto beneath reads 'Sic Semper Tyrannis' — Thus always to tyrants.

Washington is the only state with a real person's face on its seal: a portrait of George Washington copied from Gilbert Stuart's 1796 painting using a hardware-store wax seal kit — and later codified as the official emblem.