The Bald Eagle: How It Became America's National Symbol

The bald eagle has been the official emblem of the United States since June 20, 1782, when the Continental Congress placed it at the heart of the Great Seal. The story of how it got there is a lot stranger than most Americans realize, and it almost ended in extinction before it began again with one of the great wildlife comebacks in human history.

Why the Founders Picked the Bald Eagle

The choice was deliberate. It also took six years and three failed committees to land on it.

On July 4, 1776, the same day the Declaration of Independence was signed, the Continental Congress asked Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson to design a national seal. They got nowhere. A second committee tried in 1780. They got closer but missed. A third committee in 1782 brought in artist William Barton, who sketched a small white eagle on the reverse of a draft seal.

That sketch landed on the desk of Charles Thomson, the longtime Secretary of Congress. Thomson took Barton's small eagle, swapped it for the much larger and distinctly American bald eagle, gave it the olive branch and the bundle of arrows, and sent the design to Congress. They approved it the same day, June 20, 1782. Six years of debate, settled in one afternoon.

The bald eagle won out for four real reasons. It is native only to North America, which made it ours and no one else's. It mates for life and lives a long time, which the Founders saw as a stand-in for the kind of country they hoped to build. It hunts on the wing and answers to no other bird, which fit a young republic that had just told a king where to put his crown. And it looks the part. Few birds on earth carry that mix of pure white and dark brown with the same authority.

What the Eagle on the Great Seal Actually Means

Every piece of the design was chosen on purpose. None of it is decoration.

Look at a one dollar bill. The bald eagle on the back is the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States. Each part of that image carries meaning the Founders agreed on word by word.

The shield floats in front of the eagle without straps or supports. Charles Thomson explained that on purpose. The country was meant to rely on its own virtue. Nothing was holding the shield up except the eagle itself.

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The Ben Franklin Turkey Story (And What He Actually Wrote)

Yes, he wrote it. No, it was not a serious proposal.

The most famous bald eagle myth is that Benjamin Franklin wanted a wild turkey on the seal instead. People repeat it at every Thanksgiving. The full story is funnier than the meme.

In January 1784, Franklin wrote a private letter from Paris to his daughter Sarah Bache. He was annoyed by a new veterans group called the Society of the Cincinnati that was using the bald eagle as its emblem. Franklin thought their version of the eagle on the medal looked more like a turkey, and he ran with the joke for a paragraph and a half.

He did say the bald eagle is a bird of bad moral character, that it is lazy and steals fish from other birds. He did say the turkey is a much more respectable bird and a true original native of America. He never proposed putting a turkey on the seal of the United States. By the time he wrote that letter, the seal had already been finalized for over a year and a half. Franklin was venting in private, not lobbying Congress.

The turkey line is real. The campaign to swap birds is not. It is one of the longest running misquotes in American history.

The Crash and the Comeback

By 1963 the national symbol was 25 years from going extinct in the lower 48.

For most of American history the bald eagle was common. Lewis and Clark spotted them on the Missouri River. Audubon painted them in the 1830s. There were probably 100,000 nesting pairs across what is now the United States.

Then came the 20th century. Habitat loss. Lead poisoning from spent ammunition. Direct shooting. By 1940 things were bad enough that Congress passed the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, making it a federal crime to kill, possess, or even disturb one. The law slowed the bleeding but did not stop it.

The real killer came after World War II. DDT, a pesticide sprayed on crops to kill insects, washed into rivers and was eaten by fish. Bald eagles ate the fish. The chemical thinned the calcium in the eggshells the females laid. The eggs cracked under the weight of the parents trying to incubate them. A whole generation of eagles never hatched.

By 1963 there were only 417 known nesting pairs of bald eagles in the entire lower 48 states. The national symbol was on the verge of disappearing from the flag the country flew next to it.

417 Nesting pairs of bald eagles left in the lower 48 states in 1963, the population low point.

What happened next is one of the cleanest wildlife comeback stories on record. The EPA banned DDT in 1972. The Endangered Species Act passed in 1973 and listed the bald eagle the same year. Captive breeding programs at Cornell and other research stations released thousands of young eagles into the wild. State agencies put protected nest buffers in place. Hunters started switching to non lead ammunition.

The numbers turned around fast. By 1995 the bald eagle was downlisted from endangered to threatened. By 2007 it was removed from the Endangered Species list entirely. Today there are roughly 316,700 bald eagles in the lower 48, with another 50,000 in Alaska. A bird that almost disappeared in living memory is now common enough that suburban kids spot them on the way to school.

The National Bird, Officially (Finally)

For 242 years the bald eagle was the symbol but not the bird. Then in 2024 that changed.

Here is something almost no one knows. From 1782 until Christmas Eve 2024, the bald eagle was the emblem of the United States but it was not the official national bird. The Great Seal made it the symbol on coins, passports, and military uniforms, but Congress had never actually passed a law saying the bald eagle was the bird of the country. It was an honorary title at best.

That gap closed on December 24, 2024. President Joe Biden signed the National Bird Act into law, formally designating the bald eagle as the national bird of the United States. The bill had been pushed by Preston Cook, a Minnesota collector who runs the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, and it passed both chambers of Congress unanimously. After 242 years, the bird finally got the title to match the job it had been doing the entire time.

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Where You See the Bald Eagle Today

The eagle is everywhere once you start looking. Here are the five places it shows up the most.

1	U.S. currency. The back of every one dollar bill carries the Great Seal in full. The eagle is also engraved on quarters minted for select commemorative years and on the gold American Eagle bullion coins issued by the U.S. Mint since 1986.
2	The presidential seal. A nearly identical eagle appears on the Seal of the President of the United States, but with a few key differences: the stars form a halo, the shield is positioned slightly differently, and the eagle's head almost always faces the olive branch in the modern version (a 1945 update by Truman).
3	Military uniforms and unit insignia. Every branch of the U.S. armed forces carries the eagle somewhere. The Marine Corps eagle, globe, and anchor. The Army's Great Seal officer rank insignia. Air Force command pins. The Coast Guard ensign. The 101st Airborne's screaming eagle patch.
4	U.S. passports and federal buildings. The cover of every American passport. The dome of the Capitol. The seal above the entrance to the Supreme Court. Embassies overseas. Pretty much any official federal door has a bald eagle somewhere on or above it.
5	Apollo 11 and the moon. The lunar lander that touched down on the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969 was named Eagle. Neil Armstrong's first words back to mission control after landing were not the famous one. They were "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." A bald eagle, in a sense, has been on the moon longer than any human.

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Five Things People Get Wrong About the Bald Eagle

Some of these have been wrong for two hundred years.

MYTH 01

Bald eagles are bald.

They are not. The name comes from an old English word piebald, meaning patched with white. The white head feathers grow in around age four or five, when the bird reaches breeding age. Juveniles are mostly brown and often get mistaken for golden eagles by people who don't know what they're looking at.

MYTH 02

Ben Franklin tried to make the turkey our national bird.

He vented about it in a private letter to his daughter, almost two years after the seal was already final. He had no proposal in front of Congress. The line about the turkey being a respectable bird was a joke at the expense of a veterans group whose medal looked sloppy. People treat it like a serious lobbying effort. It wasn't.

MYTH 03

The eagle's head was once turned toward the arrows for war.

Half true, but only on the presidential seal, not the Great Seal. Truman ordered the change in 1945, after the war ended, so the eagle on his seal would face the olive branch in peacetime. The Great Seal of the country has always faced the olive branch since 1782. The peace posture was the default from day one.

MYTH 04

Bald eagles can carry off small dogs and toddlers.

A bald eagle can lift maybe four pounds of dead weight. Anything heavier and they can't get airborne. The internet is full of fake videos of eagles snatching kids. None of them are real. Eagles eat fish, ducks, and roadkill. They are not coming for your shih tzu.

MYTH 05

It is illegal to own a bald eagle feather.

For most Americans, yes. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act make it a federal crime to possess any part of a bald eagle, including a single shed feather. The one exception is enrolled members of federally recognized Native American tribes, who can apply for feathers through the National Eagle Repository in Colorado for ceremonial use.

If you want to see one in the wild, your best bet is winter near a major river. Bald eagles concentrate around open water where they can fish, and any cold snap that ices up the smaller lakes pushes them to the bigger ones. The Mississippi, the Skagit in Washington, the Susquehanna, and the Platte all draw hundreds of birds in January. Bring binoculars and a thermos.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the bald eagle become the national symbol?

June 20, 1782, when the Continental Congress approved the design of the Great Seal of the United States with the bald eagle at its center. It was officially named the national bird on December 24, 2024.

Why was the bald eagle chosen?

It was native to North America (and only North America), it lived a long time, it mated for life, and it carried itself with the kind of authority the Founders wanted to project. Charles Thomson finalized the design in 1782 after three earlier committees failed to land one.

Did Ben Franklin want a turkey instead?

No. He wrote one private letter in 1784 calling the bald eagle a bird of bad moral character and praising the turkey, but the seal was already finalized two years earlier. He never proposed a turkey to Congress. The story has been exaggerated for over two centuries.

What does the bald eagle on the Great Seal represent?

The olive branch in its right talon stands for peace, the 13 arrows in its left for war if forced. The shield with 13 stripes represents the original colonies. The motto E Pluribus Unum means "out of many, one." The whole design is a statement that the country prefers peace but is ready to defend itself.

How did the bald eagle almost go extinct?

DDT, a pesticide widely used after World War II, washed into rivers, was eaten by fish, and then accumulated in eagles when they ate the fish. The chemical weakened eggshells so the eggs cracked before they could hatch. Combined with habitat loss and shooting, the population dropped to 417 nesting pairs in the lower 48 by 1963.

When was the bald eagle removed from the endangered species list?

It was downlisted from endangered to threatened in 1995, then removed from the list entirely on June 28, 2007, after the population recovered to roughly 10,000 nesting pairs. Today there are over 316,000 bald eagles in the lower 48 states.

Is it illegal to own a bald eagle feather?

For most Americans, yes. The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act of 1940 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act make possession a federal crime, even for naturally shed feathers. The only legal exception is for enrolled members of federally recognized Native American tribes, who can request feathers through the National Eagle Repository for ceremonial use.

How long do bald eagles live?

In the wild, 20 to 30 years on average. The oldest banded wild bald eagle on record was 38 years old when it was hit by a car in New York in 2015. In captivity they can live past 50. Pairs mate for life and often return to the same nest year after year, adding to it each season until the nest can weigh over a ton.

Want to keep reading? The story of the eagle ties directly into the story of the flag itself. Our history of the American flag from 13 stars to 50 covers the design changes that paralleled the Great Seal. The complete U.S. flag code guide walks through how to fly the flag the bird stands behind. And our breakdown of what the colors of the American flag actually mean finishes the symbolism set.

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