Seal of Nevada

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Seal of Nevada
Seal of Nevada.svg
Details
Introduced November 29, 1861
Motto (motto) All for our country

The seal of the US state Nevada was introduced on November 29, 1861.

description

The seal shows in the background a shining sun and mountains, which symbolize the natural beauty of Nevada.

In the foreground you can see the entrance of a silver mine on the left and on the right a factory with a smoking chimney, symbols for mining in Nevada, in between a sheaf of wheat, a plow and a sickle for agriculture.

In the center, a railway drives over a viaduct, next to the railway line are telegraph poles: symbols for traffic and communication. In the inner circle of the seal there are 36 stars for Nevada as the 36th state of the USA, in the lower half of the circle the state motto:

All for our country
( Everything for our country )

The seal is typical of the pictorial heraldry of the 19th century, which replaced the symbolic heraldry of the 18th century. At the center of the picture are the state's main activities: mining and transportation.

Flag of Nevada

history

The seal was first used on November 29, 1861, when Nevada was still a territory and not a US state .

In the Constituent Assembly in 1863, the design of the seal was heavily debated. Special attention was drawn to the fact that on the first copies of the state seal, the smoke from the factory chimney went to the right, while that from the locomotive went to the left. To explain this, reference was made to the speed of the moving railway; The words “ very slow driving ” were deleted from the official description of the seal, but a sub-application that wanted to include the word “ very fast driving ” in the description did not find a majority.

The state motto was also discussed. In addition to “All for our country”, there were also “Volens et Potens” (Latin: willing and able ) and “The Union Must and Shall be Preserved” (the Union must and will be preserved) - an allusion to the emergence of Nevada as a northern state in the American Civil War . Mark Twain , who worked as a reporter for the Virginia City newspaper Territorial Enterprise from 1861 to 1864 , also made a proposal to the congregation: a rabbit sleeping in front of a sage bush labeled Volens but not so damned Potens (willing, but not so right potent).

The state seal was printed for the first time in August 1865, and it became official in this version on February 24, 1866. The rumor soon arose in Nevada that the smoke escaping in different directions was due to a joke by Mark Twain, who was friends with the state-commissioned printer. This is wrong, however: Mark Twain was not even in Nevada in 1865 because he had fled to California a year before after being asked to do a duel .

The mistake with the smoke was corrected by a government printer in 1915, from then on both columns of smoke pointed in the same direction: to the left. The new version was not used by the governor until 1929 and was therefore official.

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