I recently encountered this image, stated to be the flag of Niobrara County, Wyoming:
It was posted specifically as an "eye hurting flag"; that is, it was noted as especially ugly. I know many strange flags exist, but several elements of this strike me as possibly fake:
- The foreground of the flag appears to consist of two blurry, digitally cropped photographs (perhaps of paintings, or colorized).
- The horses depicted have their eyes replaced by black circles, which seem to be either have been produced at a lower resolution than the rest of the image, or to be victims of harsh image compression.
- The map in the background extends somewhat past the border surrounding the flag on the top.
It may be a poor recreation of the real thing just as well as a bizarre hoax targeting the least populous county in Wyoming.
What I've looked in to
Searching both for this image and for "niobrara county flag" are yielding only this page on Flags of the World, which contains the disclaimer:
The quality of images and news varies very much: the website contains not only well-known flags but also sketches and rumours, often seized on the spot from a TV report or a magazine. In any case we disclaim any responsibility about the veracity and accuracy of the contents of the website.
It credits the image to "Fred Drews". The linked page on county and municipal flags of Wyoming also indicates that this flag would have had multiple physical copies produced and flown in 2012, as part of the State Fair that year.
The county's website's banner graphic contains part of a flag, but it looks like it's just the state flag of Wyoming:
Likewise, the Google Maps Street View imagery (taken in 2018) of the Lusk Town Hall shows only the national flag of the United States:
and the location of the county government at 424 South Elm shows none at all--though this photo was taken in 2011.
I found two images of the State Fair county flag parade, and attempted to cross-reference them with the aforementioned Flags of the World page, but could not quite identify a good number of the flags, and saw a few more that seem entirely unlike any on the website: (neon lime green numerals correspond to the alphabetical order of the counties; I applied a sharpen filter because I noticed after the fact how indistinct the text is otherwise and I can't be bothered to do anything smarter at the moment)
The question
Is this image representative of a flag used by or assigned to Niobrara County, Wyoming in some official or popular capacity? If so, how faithfully does it represent it?