Gila County

GILA COUNTY

Origin/meaning

Adopted around 1912.

The Gila County seal is based on the seal for the Territory of Arizona, designed by Richard McCormick, secretary of the territory, who introduced it in 1863.

The Spartan artwork (which to some was comic, the present-day secretary of state’s office noted) featured a bearded miner standing casually in front of a wheelbarrow, pick and short-handled spade. Two bare mountains rose in the background, and at the bottom was the Latin phrase Ditat Deus, “God enriches.”

“A few decades ago, the county considered changing the seal, but some of the residents who were alive when it was passed objected, saying it was in the archives now.”

Gila County adopted its seal around 1912, emulating the territory’s seal in honor of George W. P. Hunt, a Missouri transplant who made Gila County his home before taking office as the state’s first elected governor.

The Gila County seal’s Latin inscription is slightly off, reading “Dit Deus,” which Assistant County Manager Jacque Sanders best guesses to mean “God is rich.”

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