Last modified: 2006-08-26 by rick wyatt
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Municipalities listed below have been researched for municipal flags, mainly by searching their websites. Commonly U.S. cities use the city seal on a plain field as the city flag, so we have included information about the city seal where no
other flag is known.
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See also:
The website at www.ci.adelanto.ca.us shows no actual civic heraldry. However, at http://www.aeve.com/digitaldesert/dd01/0401.html
is a photograph of City Hall, and at the top of the sign in front of the building there is something which looks very much like a city seal.
Ron Lahav, 28 June 2004
The municipal logo consists of an oak leaf veined and fimbriated violet, placed saltirewise within a rectangle also fimbriated violet and superimposed upon a landscape of green rolling hills outlined in white, with a clear sky above. Over the rectangle are the words 'City of' in very small violet lower case letters, while beneath the rectangle are the words 'AGOURA HILLS' in large violet capitals.
Ron Lahav, 28 June 2004
The website at www.cityofalhambra.org shows the municipal logo which consists of a very elaborately carved Spanish style archway through which a view of the city itself can be seen.
Ron Lahav, 28 June 2004
The city has no municipal flag, and the carved gateway which is used as the municipal logo is a reproduction of one at the original Alhambra in Granada. The town also has a civic seal.
Corrine Commentz through Ron Lahav, 1 July 2004
The website at www.ci.anderson.ca.us shows the city seal on home page, but the details are not easily visible.
Ron Lahav, 3 July 2004
The website at www.ci.arcadia.ca.us shows a black and white line drawing of the municipal seal. It is very elaborate, but not all details are clear in the b&w format used. Is that a peacock in the middle of the upper half?
Ron Lahav, 3 July 2004
The city symbol is indeed a peacock.
Ned Smith, 5 July 2004
The website at www.arcatacityhall.org appears to show a city flag at the top of each page. This consists of a pale blue rectangle with a representation of the municipal logo. A larger version of
this logo can be found at http://www.arcatacityhall.org/city_depts.html, and appears to be a colored photo of the City Hall building itself.
Ron Lahav, 3 July 2004
The website at www.cityofarvin.org shows a very large and colorful reproduction of the Arvin municipal seal, dominated by a large white letter A, with fields and hills behind it, farm produce below it, and a Hereford bull looking through it. The logo "The Garden in the Sun" is written on a yellow ribbon across it.
Ron Lahav, 5 July 2004
The website at www.atascadero.org shows the municipal seal or logo (it's not quite clear what exactly it is!), a large domed building between two wreaths crossed at the bottom. Below this structure is a ribbon divided into three unequal parts and extending across the entire lower part of the emblem. The name of the city, 'ATASCADERO.' is written in capitals across the larger, central part of the ribbon. There also appears to be text on the two flanking portions of the ribbon, but as the entire design is in black on a lilac background, and also because the image is so small, I am unable to read this text.
Ron Lahav, 5 July 2004
The large domed building is the original city hall that was the civic center of Atascadero from the town's inception until the San Simeon earthquake in December of 2003. Severe earthquake damage has now closed its doors, but restoration is in the works.
Heather Thayer, 18 August 2006
The website at www.ci.atherton.ca.us shows a simple city seal consisting of a large tree proper (perhaps an olive?) on a yellow background. This is surrounded by a white ring fimbriated brown (thicker on the inner ring than on the outer). However, the year of the city's incorporation, written above and beneath the tree, is illegible, although I can read the month and the day.
Ron Lahav, 5 July 2004
The website at www.atwater.org shows a multicolored city seal with golden letters on green outer circle. The center depicts local agricultural produce in proper colors at the foot of a blue waterfall descending from brown and ocher rocks, with the outlines of several trees at the top of the cliffs, all underneath a blue sky.
Ron Lahav, 5 July 2004
The website at www.auburn.ca/gov does not display civic heraldry.
Ron Lahav, 5 July 2004
The website at www.ci.azusa.ca.us shows the municipal seal but its size is such that I cannot readily identify the objects inside the center of the seal.
Ron Lahav, 5 July 2004
The website at www.baldwinpark.com show the logo - a Spanish colonial style structure in yellow. The roof is also tiled in yellow edged in blue, with two blue windows. To the left of this structure is a palm tree in blue and white, overshadowing a taller white building with a blue roof and one blue window. A white wagon wheel outlined in yellow rests against the left front wall of the smaller structure. Beneath the images is the word 'BALDWIN' written in large blue capitals, with the word 'P A R K' below that; each letter of this word is separated from the following one by a black dot.
Ron Lahav, 7 July 2004
The county website at www.co.riverside.ca.us has a large illustration of the Banning seal while the city's own site does not. The Banning seal consists of an outer ring made of black and gold rope or cable. The upper four-fifths of this outer ring is blank and is gray in color. The lower fifth has the word 'CALIFORNIA' in small black capitals. The center shows a landscape in the Sierra Nevada, with a black mountain range with white glaciers extending the width of the center. A small circular golden sun is visible rising between two of the peaks into a pale blue sky. Two-thirds of the way down the center is an old gold ribbon divided into three parts and extending beyond the outer circle fesswise. Within the larger center section of the ribbon is the word 'BANNING' in large black capitals. To the left of this is a brown stagecoach horseless which covers the entire lower left of the seal. The bottom fifth of the center of the seal is a green meadow with the year '1913' in small black capitals.
Ron Lahav, 7 July 2004
The website at www.barstowca.org shows the logo - a small blue square, within which is a stylized golden sun, whose similarly stylized rays extend beyond the square in a 180 degree arc. Above this are the words 'THE CITY OF' in blue capitals, while beneath this is the word 'BARSTOW' in elongated red ones. Beneath the entire logo is a blue bar edged in pale gray with the words 'CROSSROADS OF OPPORTUNITY' in white capitals. There is a small gap between this bar and a similar one, but this second bar is blank.
Ron Lahav, 7 July 2004
The website at www.bellgardens.org shows the seal in a gray, pseudo-embossed format. The outer ring has the words 'CITY OF BELL GARDENS' in capitals at the top. The bottom has a small wreath beneath the central image, with the word 'CALIFORNIA' written in smaller capitals. The center consists of an urban cityscape, with the words 'HUB OF PROGRESS' in capitals immediately beneath it.
Ron Lahav, 7 July 2004
The website at www.belmont.gov shows the city seal depicting a range of blue-gray mountains, with two rivers in white running through them. Above this is a golden sun in a similarly colored sky, with stylized purple rays stretching the width of the sky. The seal is flattened at the bottom, with 'CALIFORNIA' written in small white capitals at the very bottom of the central image. The seal is surrounded by a narrow white ring, and this is flattened into a label at the very bottom of the seal. This label is white with blue edging and contains the words 'CITY OF BELMONT' in large red capitals.
Ron Lahav, 10 July 2004
The website at www.ci.benicia.ca.us shows no municipal heraldry.
Ron Lahav, 10 July 2004
The website at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/news shows a rather unimpressive logo consisting of a small black square; at the upper left are the words 'CITY OF' written in small white capitals, while along the left side of the square the word 'BERKELEY' is written in larger white capitals. To the right of the square
appears to be an optical illusion in black and white, but the entire design is so small that I cannot distinguish its features clearly.
Ron Lahav, 10 July 2004
The Deputy City Clerk of Berkeley reports that the city has a seal consisting of a coat of arms, apparently with the name Berkeley, possibly originally belonging to a Lord Berkeley. The coat of arms, however, might belong not to a mythical British peer of the realm, but to Bishop George Berkeley, the early 18th Century Anglo- Irish philosopher. Not only was Bishop Berkeley the first European intellectual to spend a considerable time in the New World (he lived for six years in Newport, Rhode Island), but he was the first great advocate of British and in fact European settlement in North America. He had conceived the idea that in the New World all the evils of European society could be left behind and a 'brave new world' (to coin a phrase) could be created. My reason for guessing that the arms might be those of Bishop Berkeley is that apparently there is some identification with either the name or the place 'Berkeley', and the good bishop penned the famous lines 'Westward the course of empire wends its way.'
Ron Lahav, 4 August 2004
Wikipedia reports "the history of the city is inextricably linked to its university. According to the Centennial Record of the University of California, "In 1866...at Founders' Rock, a group of College of California men were watching two ships standing out to sea through the Golden Gate. One of them, Frederick Billings, was reminded of the lines of Bishop Berkeley, 'westward the course of empire takes it way,' and suggested that the town and college site be named for the eighteenth- entury English philosopher and poet."
Richard Knipel, 6 August 2004
The ancient arms associated with the Berkeley family are reasonably well known in heraldic circles. I believe they appear in Boutell's Heraldry and know they are used by Berkeley College of Yale University. They are "gules a chevron
between ten crosses paty argent," or in ordinary language, red with a white chevron and ten white crosses that resemble the Iron Cross.
Joe McMillan, 6 August 2004
The city seal, which features a photo of a local landscape including the lake which gives the city its name, can be found on the Home Page.
Ron Lahav, 10 July 2004
The website at www.cityofblythe.com
shows no civic heraldry.
Ron Lahav, 10 July 2004
The assistant city clerk informs me that Blythe has no municipal flag, and likewise has no municipal heraldry, nor corporate city seal other than a rubber stamp which reads 'CITY OF BLYTHE, CALIFORNIA' in capital letters.
Ron Lahav, 23 July 2004
At www.cityofbrawley.com the municipal seal of Brawley can be found. It consists of a circular format; in an outer circle, dark blue in color, are the words 'CITY OF BRAWLEY' at the top in white capitals. Flanking the centerpiece at each side are two white dots, while the bottom half of the outer ring contains the words 'Incorporated 1908.' The centerpiece shows a golden cornucopia striped with black disgorging its treasures on to a golden valley, with a range of golden hills, likewise edged in black, in the background. A golden sun, similarly edged, rises over the hills into a clear white sky, with faint outlines in gray of clouds nearby.
Ron Lahav, 17 July 2004
The website at www.ci.brea.ca.us shows no municipal heraldry.
Ron Lahav, 17 July 2004
The website at www.ci.brentwood.ca.us/start.cfm shows a municipal logo - within a black framework is a semicircle outlined in black containing a smaller semicircle similarly outlined. Within this smaller circle there seems to be a tree standing in the center of a landscape; both tree and landscape are in very dark green. Beneath this smaller semicircle is a thin black line, followed by a white space and then a thicker black line placed fesswise and containing the words 'CITY OF' in white capitals. Underneath the larger semicircle is the word 'BRENTWOOD' in large stylized black capitals, with the tail of the letter 'R' extended and curving outside the frame.
Ron Lahav, 17 July 2004
The website at www.buenapark.com shows a small version of the city seal, displaying a map outline of the city, but the format is too small to identify any details.
Ron Lahav, 17 July 2004
A slightly bigger image is shown at
www.wcainc.com/template/library/pics/Buena%20Park%20Seal.jpg. Still too small to be certain, but I think it shows a map of a portion of the coast of southern California. And according to the local historical society "The little hamlet that grew up around a creamery laid the foundation for the city that has truly become what its seal shows it to be: 'THE CENTER OF THE
SOUTHLAND' "
Ned Smith, 17 July 2004
The website at www.burlingame.org shows the municipal seal is in an unusual octagonal format. The outer portion is a black octagon fimbriated white, on which the words 'THE CITY OF' are written
in white capitals. The lower portion of the outer octagon contains the words 'INCORPORATED 1909' in smaller white capitals. The central image consists of a redwood tree proper impaling a landscape, with what appears to be a ship in the far left, the both in green. Halfway down the entire seal and extending from one edge to the other is a white fess, inscribed with the words 'BURLINGAME' in large black capitals, and beneath that 'CALIFORNIA' in minute black capitals.
Ron Lahav, 17 July 2004
Continued in California Municipal Symbols, C
