Alaska Flag Song

Lyrics by Marie Drake
Music by Elinor Dusenbury
(This photo is of a sign on a building on Creek Street in Ketchikan)

The Blue flowers under the words to the Alaska Flag Song (in the photo above) are Forget-me-nots, the state flower of Alaska. The bill to adopt the Forget-me-not as the official flower of the Territory of Alaska, in 1917, included this poem written by Esther Birdsall Darling:

So in thinking for an emblem
For this Empire of the North
We will choose this azure flower
That the golden days bring forth,

For we want men to remember
That Alaska came to stay
Though she slept unknown for ages
And awakened in a day.

So although they say we're living
In the land that God forgot,
We'll recall Alaska to them
With our blue Forget-me-not.

Another poem was written in the margins of the bill:

A little flower blossoms forth
On every hill and dale,

The emblem of the Pioneers
Upon the rugged trail;

The Pioneers have asked it
And we could deny them not;

So the emblem of Alaska
Is the blue Forget-me-not.

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