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Santa Clara, California (U.S.)

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 1 October 2007

Flag Description
Seal

See also:

Flag Description

The city flag is white over red with the seal centered and the words Santa Clara, CA over the seal. The date in the bottom of the seal is 1852. The building in the seal is the fourth mission "La Misión Santa Clara de Asís" - three were taken out in floods (being built much closer to the Guadalupe river than now) the last building was destroyed by fire in 1936 and the one in the photo is a reconstruction at about 1.5 the original scale. The church (it is still an active Church) is part of the Campus of the University of Santa Clara and the University and the Church are run by the Society of Jesus (SJ).
Rich Hansen, 2 December 1998

It should be noted that the flag shows also arched red lettering "Santa Clara" far above the shield, set in sans serif capitals, and that the seal as used on the flag (or at least in the mentioned source image) is different from the stand-alone version (or at least in the mentioned source image): The rim around the image is golden yellow, not white; the sky is white with grey wisps, not blue with white clouds; and the ground is blue, not green.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 1 October 2007

Seal

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 2 October 2007

I found a short video showing the Santa Clara city flag waving [no longer available] and an image (small) of the city seal (shown above) at www.scu.edu/cas/environmentalstudies/ulistac/news/images/Citysealcolorsm.jpg.
Valentin Poposki, 22 September 2007

"Santa Clara, California, founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. It has about 109,000 residents. The city is the site of the eighth of 21 California missions, Mission Santa Clara de Asís, and was named after the mission. The Mission and Mission Gardens are located on the grounds of Santa Clara University. Santa Clara is located in the center of Silicon Valley, and is home to the headquarters of Intel, Applied Materials, Sun Microsystems, NVIDIA, Agilent Technologies, and many other high- tech companies. It is home to both Mission College and Santa Clara University, the latter being the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of California."
from Wikipedia

The flag story:
"Santa Clara’s City flag, displayed in Council Chambers, is half white (top half) and half red (bottom half). A stylized version of the ‘City seal’ is in the center of the flag. The words “Santa Clara” are in red lettering in the white field over the top of the seal. The seal is gold in color, with black around the outside and for the drawing of Mission Santa Clara within the seal. The sky in the seal is white, and the grass is green. The words “The Mission City” are in black ink in the grass area of the seal.

The flag was first unveiled and presented to the City in 1967 in honor of the 115th anniversary of the City. The Mayor at that time was Larry Marsalli. There was a brief article on the unveiling in the Santa Clara Journal newspaper, October 18, 1967, with a black and white photograph showing City dignitaries holding the new flag. It is interesting to note that the original flag, as shown in the photograph, had reverse fields of white and red, with the red on the top half and the white on the bottom half, and the words “Santa Clara” in the bottom half. This original flag appearance is described in City Council minutes. It is not known why or when the fields of red and white were switched. Minutes from the October 10, 1967 City Council meeting also state, “As another Special Order of Business and as part of the “City Government Week” activities, Mrs. Ari Kulpa, Local Chairman, presented the new official City Flag to the Mayor and Council for official unveiling."
from municipal website: santaclaraca.gov/about_us/official-city-items.html. There you can also see an image of the flag and a b/w photo of the first flag.
Valentin Poposki, 19 December 2008