US Municipal Flags – Oklahoma thru South Carolina

Oklahoma

Best:  Tulsa

Interesting. I like it’s simplicity, as well as that pretty clever seal.

Be that as it may, this one actually may be superseded any day now by this rather handsome contest winner: 

Somewhat surprisingly, though, Tulsa was not always known for its well-designed flags. Here, for example, is what flew between 1924 and 1941:

Banzai! Maybe the town's penchant for decent flag design all came about as a reaction to that thing.


Worst:  Bartlesville

Music! Theatre! Indians! Sports! Oil! Skyscrapers! You can find it all in Bartlesville!

Now, how to improve? Well, this one is easy. B-ville just came up with a snazzy new logo. Throw it one a bed sheet, and you're done:

Oregon

Best:  Portland

Here’s a winner. I love the colors, especially the green for the Emerald City (and the area’s forests) and the blue for the Columbia and Willamette rivers. I also like how the intersection of those two rivers is signaled pretty darn cleverly by the cross. Finally, the little offset that creates that little star (representing the city itself) is particularly creative as well. Not too surprisingly, this one is in the NAVA top 10, coming in at #7.

The only beef I have is probably just a quibble from a flag nerd. I just can't help thinking Portland must have been settled by Scandinavians - maybe Swedes in particular.

Douglas Lynch, local graphic designer and president of the local Art Commission can take credit for this one. It dates back only to 2002.


Worst:  Chiloquin

The flag as stationery. I also think all that stuff on the left needs is a wolf.

The town? I had to just share this description I found on FOTW:

The City of Chiloquin, Oregon is located approximately 30 miles north of Klamath Falls in Klamath County. It is one mile east of Highway 97. The City limits boast of a population of 720. There is a small airport that parallels the highway. Chiloquin has an altitude of 4178 feet. It is nestled in a small valley surrounded by mountains. The Williamson River runs through the center of town and joins with the Sprague River just to the south of the City limits. Fishing and hunting are favorite sports here. There are deer, elk, and ducks in the area. Agency Lake is a favorite fishing place, while the Williamson River is considered one of Oregon's top trophy fly fishing waters.

With those short, punchy sentences, I'm guessing that might have been written by a 5th grader.


Pennsylvania

Best:  Easton

Unique, and historic too.This one dates all the way back to 1812, and was the flag of a local militia. Some like to claim it goes all the way back to 1776, and was the first national flag.

Bristol is up the Delaware, north of Philly. Dating back to 1752, this burg has not quite 27,000 people. It's the home of Crayola crayons.

Honorable mention:  Philadelphia, Pittsburgh


Worst:  Coal Township

Well, it kind of gets straight to the point, doesn’t it? That said, that has to be the most inept representation of a coal car I’ve ever seen (I particularly like the googly-eye wheels). Perhaps there’s a classier way to represent mining or coal or what have you. Like maybe this:

Coal Township has just over 10,000 people, is in the center of the state, and features a big prison.


Rhode Island

Best:  Little Compton

Straight outta Little Compton (sorry) – simple, large elements, fairly heraldic ... I like it!

Little Compton is on the coast, just east of Newport. It looks like a pretty tony (and historic) place.

Whence the geese and arrow? Honestly, I have no idea.

Honorable mention:  Warwick


Worst:  Cumberland

What is that thing? I mean, the diamond, inside the triangle, inside the shield?

There’s lotta history here. You’d think they could do a little better than this. I mean, it looks like something from a particularly boring PTA.

How to improve? Well, here’s the flag of the county (i.e., shire) of Cumberland, back in merry old England:

What are those things? Well, Grass of Parnassus blossoms, of course.

Hmm. Kinda particular, no? Maybe we could put some stars in there instead:

Oh, the city? It’s in the northeast corner of state. Has about 33,000 people. 


South Carolina

Best:  Pendleton

This one’s pretty different. Honestly, I wish more flags did that diagonal thing. I also like the blue / red combination. You might think the color contrast wouldn’t work here, but it really does.

At the same time, though, this baby also represents quite an interesting riff on the ol’ red-white-and-blue. Especially with those stars. I really like this one.

Pendelton started as a mountain retreat for Low Country plantation owners. It now counts 3,000 inhabitants. Spent the night there in an old B&B once.


Worst:  Florence County

Hooboy, that’s a lotta stuff!  How about we get rid of the text, the gears, and some of the many stripes:

Florence County is home to the city of Florence, which also does duty as the county seat. Both county and city were named after the daughter of one Gen. W. W. Harllee. 


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US Municipal Flags – New Mexico thru Ohio

New Mexico

Best:  Las Cruces

Ooh – new favorite. I feel the super simple color scheme is a terrific match for the very unique and different symbol in the middle. I find it hard to believe that NAVA didn’t even rank this one.

That symbol? Well, obviously, “Las Cruces” means “the crosses.” But did you get that there are 3 of them? Yup, black, white, black; left to right; back to front. But if you’re not getting it, you’re not alone. Here’s what some random dude on the Interwebs had to say about it: 

Looking at that thing hurts my head...It's like a bad optical illusion. Can't they just put three crosses on it completely separate?

This town of not quite 100,000 is home to New Mexico State, White Sands, and Spaceport America.


Worst:  Belen

Perhaps this would make a nice beach blanket. A municipal flag? Not so much.

So, here’s the straight poop on this baby from no less a personage than the town secretary:

The flag was designed by Ronnie Torres, the Mayor of Belen with the help of Bruce Prater of Graphics Art Station, a local business in Belen. Mr. Torres wanted the flag to signify Belen as the City different [sic]. The train is to represent the long time relationship of Belen with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad "BNSF" and the Harvey Museum associated with the railroad. The Star is representative of the star of Bethlehem, the meaning of Belen, being Bethlehem.

So, I actually like that they tried to tie in the two themes, the railroad and the star of Bethlehem. Perhaps they were just trying a little too hard.

You know, the town actually has a pretty nice seal:

That definitely gets the railroad theme across. Maybe if they just combined that with a star, they might be just fine:

I’m sure someone out there with some graphic design skills can do a better job of that than I could.

By the way, in addition to the association with the railroad and Bethlehem, this town of 7,000 also lays claim to being where waffle fries were first cut.

Stop the presses!  Between the time this was written and the time I published it, Belen came up with a new flag:

Well played, Belen. Well played. 

May I make a suggestion though? That's a lotta text over there on the right. How 'bout a simple "Belen / 1740"? Thank you.


New York

Best:  Buffalo

It’s fairly simple, but I just absolutely love those lightning bolts. They’re pretty unique, but they also do a good job signaling Buffalo’s important role as an early adopter of electric power. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Buffalo used to be known as “The City of Light.” Not to be confused with that other City of Light across the pomd, of course.

Honorable mention:  New York


Worst:  Governors Island

What is that?  It actually looks uncannily like a toy of my youth, called a doodlebug.  (I might have gotten that name wrong, though, as I couldn’t find any pictures of one on Google Images.)

You’ve probably already guessed that that rather odd shape is in fact the island itself. Indeed, you may even know that Governor’s Island is in New York Harbor, and that it owes that peculiar shape to its having been built up over the years, mostly by the US military.

Other than that very freaky shape, though, it’s not a bad flag. It was, in fact, fashioned by a design firm, one Level M. Maybe if we just subbed out the doodlebug for something else. How about a classy/fancy “G I”:

North Carolina

Check out that cool border, would ya. It’s very heraldic, is called a “componee,” and is obviously taken from the coat of arms in the seal.

And that coat of arms happens to belong to one Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort, and one of the Lords Proprietor of Carolina. Those were 8 English dudes who basically owned the Carolinas back in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. 

The town of Beaufort itself dates all the way back to 1709. A quaint coastal village of 2,000, it may be most famous for its associations with the pirate Blackbeard (his flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge was recently discovered and excavated nearby).

Honorable mention:  Raleigh


Worst:  Jacksonville

Busy, busy, busy. Would you believe this baby has no less than 66 characters on it? It’s not a flag – it’s a press release!

So, what’s a good fix? The Marines are a huge part of the town, so maybe we could start with a Marine red background:

I was thinking we could throw the city seal on that, but the flag is basically the seal, so that’s not going to work. Okay, I’m stuck.


North Dakota

It’s a little busy, I’ll admit. That thing in the bottom is pretty clever though (it represents the confluence of the Red and Red Lake rivers, where the city is situated). 

Maybe we could just eliminate all the other stuff and make the graphic a little bigger (and, yes, I am redoing the best the state has to offer):

Grand Forks, with a population of not quite 100,000, is the 3rd largest city in North Dakota. Right along the border with Minnesota, it’s mostly known for getting flooded. It’s also the location of a large Air Force base and the University of North Dakota.


Worst:  Drayton

So, your first question is probably, “What is that thing?”  Well, would you believe it’s a beet? Yup, a sugar beet – which happen to be white, not red.

Drayton is, in fact, the location of a large sugar refinery, and is in the middle of major sugar beet country. (It’s also just a little up the Red River from Grand Falls, and has a population of 800.)

Now, that doesn’t explain all the other stuff going on here – the name, the colors, the shapes ... Maybe if we just focused on a couple of these. I like the beet, but if we go with that, how do we design it so it would be suitable for a flag (unlike that terribly misshapen, cartoonish thing that’s there now)?

Well, Drayton is also known as the Baseball Capital of North Dakota, as well as the Catfish Capital of the North. So perhaps there are some ideas there.


Ohio

Best:  Minster

Somebody put some thought into this one. Indeed, the designer, David Hoying, explains that the colors “are the colors of the flag of the city of Munster [in Germany],” where the first settlers came from and which the town is named after. 

The nice, simple shield also has meaning as well. Oddly, though, Hoyning gave everything but that canal boat in the lower left corner a very … um, Saxon/pagan? … vibe:

• CROSS - The cross represents the strong Christian faith of the community. This faith was rooted in the late eighth century when Christianity was brought by the victorious Charlemagne and the venerable Benedictine missionaries to the defeated Saxon tribes in the area that was to comprise the Dioceses of Munster and Osnabruck.
• OAK LEAF AND ACORN - The acorn is a symbol of the Saxon tribes to whom the oak leaf served as a symbol of strength. The early pagan ancestors of the settlers of Stallostown worshipped the oak tree as a deity. The "tree of life" was an important feature of many customs that developed later in the Münsterland.
• HORSE HEADS - Two crossed wooden equine heads are another ancient symbol of the Saxon nature religion. These heads were placed at the peak of the front gable of the old homeland farmhouses to ward off evil and thus served as an omen of good fortune.

Worst:  Latty Township

Well, it is a bold color combination, I can say that for it. Maybe a little too bold. It could use a little color contrast too. I find the black on dark green particularly unhappy.

Not sure where to go with this one. Nothing I could uncover about the town is helping me any here either. Seems like it’s a teeny place of under 200 people, dates back to the 1880s, and is in the northwest corner of the state. And that’s about all I could find on it.


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US Municipal Flags – Montana to New Jersey

Montana

Best: Billings

Hey, it’s the best of a bad bunch. I do like the blue stripes. That seal could use a little work though. 

So, seeing as they call themselves the “star of Big Sky Country,” why not just sub a nice star for that thing:

Worst:  Browning

It’s not a disaster. It’s simple. I also like how they didn’t feel they had to center it.

That said, what is that thing?

Maybe we could simplify this a little. There’s plenty of eagles out there on Google Images. How about a Native American one of those (to reflect the town’s heritage), with maybe a brown circle for Browning:

This town of 1,000 is on a Blackfoot Indian reservation, not too far from the Canadian border.


Nebraska

Best:  Lincoln

Yeah, it’s basically a seal on a bed sheet, but it does have a few nice wrinkles (groan):

• The seal is nice and large
• It’s not your typical one, and has some genuine visual interest
• The royal blue background 

That white thing? Why, it’s the state capitol. One of the few skyscraper state capitols out there.

Honorable mention:  Omaha (though it does look a little like a Grateful Dead album cover)


Worst:  Brown County

This baby’s actually pretty famous. It was voted “worst flag ever” on Reddit. In addition, somebody had some serious fun using the “aesthetic” here and applied it to some other flags as well:

What to actually do with this god-awful mess? Once again, let’s just use a few of those many elements:

Nevada

Best:  Reno

Hard to believe, but this one is just a few months old. It was adopted by the City Council in April of this year, being rolled out to celebrate the city's 150th birthday. 

The city had never actually had an official flag before, though this unofficial one dates back to 1959 (and is actually not that bad at all):

The design was the result of a contest, with 150 entries being narrowed down to 13 by a committee, then voted on by the whole city. The winning designer was a 23-year-old native by the name of Tucker Stosic. 


Worst:  Fernley

Repeat after me, “Flags are not paintings.” 

It sounds like this baby might be the result of, not only a committee, but a committee that couldn’t make up its mind:

A contest for the city's flag was launched by the Fernley Arts & Culture Commission in 2007. The commission decided to mix ideas from the three top designs, proposed by Paulette Patten, Alex Lacko and Goldie Henderson, respectively

Here’s what that flag might look like it was a flag, and not a painting:

This town of 19,000 is in the Sparks-Reno Metropolitan Area, and was incorporated only in 2001.


New Hampshire

Best:  Concord

Interesting. I like the off-center stripe, the very large words, and the rather unusual pic. 

They also have a version that is sans words, which I must admit I do prefer:

Concord, with a population of 42,000, is the capital of the Granite State. It also just so happens to be the one-time home of the Downing-Abbot Company, founded in 1827, and makers of the Concord Coach, the coach that Wells Fargo made famous. Cool!

Worst:  Milford

Honestly, it looks like a local telephone company logo from the late 1960s. 

There seems to be no shortage of symbolism involved here:

• The gray of the granite which is extensively quarried here in Milford making Milford the granite town of the granite state;
• The purple was to represent our connection to New Hampshire symbols of the purple lilac and purple finch, the state floral emblem and state bird;
• The blue stripe was to represent the Souhegan River which flows through Milford.
• Over the blue river was placed a mill wheel showing the "mill fording" the river. Many mills were built along the river to take advantage of the power of the falls.
• The spokes and hub were to represent the town oval where all roads lead.
• The gold bell on the flag is representative of the bell in the clock tower of the town hall, which is a Paul Revere bell and has been part of the town since 1846.

Whew! You know, symbolism’s a great thing, but sometimes you can go a little too far.

Here’s my woeful, Microsoft Paint version of something perhaps just a tad simpler:

Heck, you could even throw in that wheel. Just put it behind the bell. Brown would probably be fine for the color. (I’m not going to try and attempt that in Paint.)


New Jersey

Best:  Trenton

Strong colors, a little heraldry, a pretty simple seal … and I just love the bicolor background (why don’t more cities do that?).

Another state capital, Trenton was actually once the capital of the US as well.

Honorable mention:  Jersey City


Worst:  Manville

You know, I think there’s some room for a kitchen sink over on the right there. And, yes, that would indeed fit in the with the family-friendly theme.

This city of 10,000 is about halfway between Philadelphia and New York. It was actually named after Johns-Manville Corp. co-founder C.B. Manville (the company had an asbestos factory there). 

It has a large Ukrainian population, which may explain the yellow and blue. It also has a large Polish population as well though. Maybe we could combine their traditional colors – red & white – with the blue & yellow:

And if that’s too basic for you, feel free to add a “Manville,” or the city seal, or whatever. Just not all that stuff that’s on the existing flag.


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