Tucson's flag features an unusual design: on a white field, the municipal seal shows two interlocking half-circles like a yin-yang. The yellow side contains the Tucson skyline of 1949; the blue-violet side shows the Mission San Xavier del Bac, an architectural jewel of the Sonoran Desert.
This design was created by Mary Crowfoot in 1949 during a competition for a new municipal seal. It became the official seal, then was incorporated into the official flag on January 5, 1953. The visual duality is no accident: it represents Tucson's dual identity, a city both Hispanic and Anglo-American, ancient and modern, desert and urban.
It is a reminder that Tucson was in turn Spanish territory, then Mexican, then American after the Gadsden Purchase of 1854. It is a border city in the deepest sense of the term.
Tucson (from the O'odham word "Cuk Ṣon" meaning "at the foot of the black mountain") is surrounded by five mountain ranges and crossed by the Sonoran Desert. Its flag captures this essence: two histories in balance, two cultures in dialogue, a city that looks simultaneously toward its colonial past and its technological future.