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Winneconne, Wisconsin (U.S.)

Winnebago County

image provided by Antonio Martins, 26 October 2023

Description of the flag

See also:

Description of the flag

The village of Winneconne, is famous for the excellent fishing from the main bridge spanning the Wolf River. But there was a time when the village was not so famous. In 1967, Winneconne was inadvertently left off the Wisconsin state map!

In protest, the villagers seceded, declaring themselves to be "the sovereign state of Winneconne" until then-Governor Knowles called them up to apologize. The village has been on the map every year since then, but Winneconne still holds an annual festival each year to commemorate "Sovereign State Days." Those who use their Wisconsin state map to locate Winneconne today will find a thriving village with a well-rounded business district and its own industrial park. Lake Poygan, Lake Winneconne and Lake Butte des Morts have proved a major attraction for tourists and for residents wishing to combine small-town life with magnificent water views.
https://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/wouters/hobby/hometown.html
Submitted by Dov Gutterman, 12 April 1999

At https://sovereignstateofwinneconne.com, which seems to be the official website for the mock sovereignty movement and its annual celebration event, managed by the village administration as “The Sovereign State of Winneconne” is a history section that shows https://sovereignstateofwinneconne.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/kontos.jpg, which seems to be a 1967 photo of George Kontos, the “new state”’s original Secretary of the Navy, inspecting/presenting the flag. Although only partially shown, this photo allows a more rigorous reconstruction of the design in actual use back then. It notably shows no red frame all around and besides it seems to be in 3:5 ratio instead of the 2:3 of the original (?) artwork, and the red edging around the central disc rim seems to be proportionally thinner, while the disc itself seems to be slightly larger.

This website also shows a 1990s-style animated flag image https://sovereignstateofwinneconne.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ssdwave.gif, also with no red frame all around, and the four animals in larger relative size, as well as a larger central disc.

Mentions of the flag were included in some of the media coverage of the day:
https://sovereignstateofwinneconne.com/secession-days-story/
Beckley Post-Herald The Raleigh Register_ 1967.07.23: p.2
The Waco News-Tribune 1967.07.24: p.6
Janesville Daily Gazette 1967.07.14: p.7

The description of the flag itself is more or less detailed in these newsstories, but they all refer to the symbolic (albeit humorous) flag raising ceremony, with the new Winneconne flag replacing that of Wisconsin on July 22nd, 1967, only to be lowered back the next day, as the secession is voluntarily annulled after, in a pre-arranged telephone conversation (shared throughout town by P.A.) between the village President and the Governor, the State of Wisconsin “caves in” to Winneconne’s demand to be included in the 1968 official road map.

David B. Martucci sent me an article from The Flag Bulletin *VII:1 (=24)* (Winter 1968): pp.25-27, by Donald F. Mendyke [dfm68]; meanwhile see [bib-tfa.html#tfb]):

It’s the extinct dodo, the unwelcome skunk, the poison ivy, and the despised sheephead fish as given in [dfm68], a caricature of the sense of being felt forsaken and unworthy caused by the 1967 cartographic mishap that triggered the whole phenomenon. Likewise, the cryptic motto on the central disc, "We like it — where?", is explained in [dfm68] to be a play on Wisconsin unofficial motto "We like it here".

image provided by Antonio Martins, 26 October 2023

This article [dfm68] in The Flag Bulletin is illustrated with a line-draw image that includes the edging all around the flag — indeed it describes its geometry rather as "four separate blue rectangles on a red background." We can therefore state that two versions of this flag design exist in some capacity, even if the one without the red edging seems to have been the one in actual cloth use.

Did it stay a joke and that’s all that it is? Or did it become an actual municipal flag? It would seem not, although I could not find any other flag in use by the village administration. I also could not find any images of the flag itself in real life use among the shown photos of the festivities in recent years, in spite of this annual event being inspired by the original publicity stunt where the flag played such an important role.

At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winneconne_(town),_Wisconsin, it is said that "the Village of Winneconne is located within the town", linking to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winneconne,_Wisconsin.
See also these two official websites:
- https://www.winneconnewi.gov/
- https://www.tn.winneconne.wi.gov/

António Martins-Tuválkin, 26 October 2023

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