Orange County, California (U.S.)

Last modified: 2010-08-13 by rick wyatt
Keywords: orange county | california | sun |
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image by Jens Pattke, 29 April 2001

• Description of the flag

See also:

• Brea
• Buena Park
• Costa Mesa
• Cypress
• Dana Point
• Fountain Valley
• Fullerton
• Garden Grove
• Huntington Beach
• Irvine
• Laguna Beach
• Laguna Hills
• Laguna Niguel
• La Habra
• Lake Forest
• La Palma
• Los Alamitos
• Mission Viejo
• Newport Beach
• Orange
• Placentia
• Rancho Santa Margarita
• San Clemente
• Santa Ana
• San Juan Capistrano
• Stanton
• Tustin
• State of California
• United States

Description of the flag

On his blog "O.C. History Roundup", Chris Jepsen presents the flag (contribution dated 7 October 2009) as follows:

"The Orange County flag was officially adopted by the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Dec. 11, 1968. The design was selected in a contest of high school students held earlier that year. There were 80 entries. The winning entry (shown above) was by Laura Shernaman, an 11th grader at Fountain Valley High School. The flag was first flown at the opening of the new Orange County Courthouse on Jan. 10, 1969, at 3:00 p.m. Note that the flag features a yellow sunburst surrounding the County emblem – an element that is often left out.

The circular emblem at the center of the flag (featuring three oranges, Old Saddleback, and rows of fields) has somewhat mysterious origins. The first usage I’ve heard of was in 1948, but there is no sign that it was ever officially adopted by the County. The official County seal remains a single orange with a stem and three leaves.

Below is another iteration of the County flag. It's interesting how many different shapes the yellow sunburst has taken over the years. Notice also that the text has changed from gold to white and that the mountains look less like Old Saddleback. It seems the flag's design drifts a bit over time."
ochistorical.blogspot.com/2009/07/orange-countys-flag.html
Ivan Sache, 17 December 2009

Slightly different design of the flag of the Orange county, California, and additional information. It seems that the image is the original artwork of the contest: www.flickr.com/photos/ocarchives/3708007352.
Valentin Poposki, 1 August 2009

An obviously handmade "prototype" flag is still in the courthouse lobby. It mostly resembles the image above, but the seal is larger and the proportions are something like 3:4. The "normal" flags, meanwhile, come in three versions: orange with seal in solar corona, orange with seal w/o corona, white with seal w/o corona - the last one I've only seen at the Santa Ana (county seat) train station.
Eugene Ipavec, 1 August 2009