The Great Seal of the State of California was adopted at the California state Constitutional Convention of 1849 and has undergone minor design changes since then, the last being the standardization of the seal in 1937. The seal shows Athena in Greek mythology (alternately Minerva in Roman mythology), the goddess of wisdom and war, because she was born an adult, and California was never a territory; a California grizzly bear, the official state animal, feeding on grape vines, representing California's wine production; a sheaf of grain, representing agriculture; a miner, representing the California Gold Rush and the mining industry; and sailing ships, representing the state's economic power. The word Eureka ( in Greek), meaning "I have found it", is the California state motto.
The original design of the seal was by U.S. Army major Robert S. Garnett and engraved by Albert Kuner. However, because of the friction then in existence between the military and civil authorities, Garnett was unwilling to introduce the design to the constitutional convention, so convention clerk Caleb Lyon introduced it as his own design, with Garnett's approval. Garnett later became the first general to be killed in the Civil War, where he served as a Confederate.
Overview
Legal definition The legal definition of the Great Seal of the State of California is found in the California Government Code, Sections 399–405.http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=gov&group=00001-01000&file=399-405 California Government Code, Section 399-405 — Defines the Great Seal of the State of California, . (This on-line text version is incomplete: The Great Seal appears in the hard-copy publication of the chaptered bill. See Chapter 134, page 902, Statutes of 1943.)
Original 1849 description
The geography of the Seal
Although the waters were described in 1849 as being "of the Sacramento" and the mountains in the background as being "the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada", other, very early descriptions referred to the body of water as San Francisco Bay."The Great Seal of California", The Illustrated London News, January 12, 1850, 21Frank Soulé, The Annals of San Francisco (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1855), 805"Reminiscences of the State Seal", Sacramento Union, March 17, 1858, 2A very early (1895) and the most recent (2000) editions of the California Blue Book endorsed the Golden Gate view (California Blue Book (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1895), 299, and Stephen Hummelt, Cheryl Brown, and Bernadette McNulty, eds., California Blue Book: Sesquicentennial Edition (Sacramento: Office of the Secretary of the Senate, 2000), 732)"Our Illustrated Envelopes: The California Coat of Arms", The Wide West: Illustrated Holiday Edition, December 25, 1854, 2 In a letter to Lyon dated two days before the seal was approved by the convention, Garnett described the landscape as a "view of the Bay of San Francisco and its vessels",Robert S. Garnett, letter to Caleb Lyon, September 30, 1849 (Courtesy of Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries) and in 1899, Garnett's brother referred to the mountain as Mount Diablo,Louis A. Garnett, "The True Story of the Origin of the Great Seal of the State of California", San Francisco Chronicle, December 10, 1899, 10 supports Robert's view, if Minerva is placed in San Francisco and 'up' is toward the east.
In 1928, due to the number of incorrect details that had appeared in the seal over the years, with the earliest being pointed out as in 1914"State Is Full of Great Seals – All Are Wrong, Artist Finds", San Francisco Examiner, April 9, 1914, 8), state printer Carroll H. Smith was authorized to prepare a new and correct seal."Great Seal of State Wrong", Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1928, 4 This seal was drawn by Los Angeles heraldic artist Marc J. Rowe who, among other corrections, narrowed the growing break in the mountains so that it appeared to be the Sacramento River, "fringed by snow-capped Sierra, and not an arm of San Francisco Bay, as the old seal made it appear"."Sacramento River Wends Its Way Across State's Great Seal", Sacramento Bee, June 7, 1928, 16 San Franciscans considered this change to be "a slight on their city in favor of Los Angeles"."San Franciscans Protest Seal as Los Angeles Art", Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1928, 1 His design was not adopted as the official seal,J. N. Bowman, "The Great Seal of California", California Blue Book (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1950), 167 although it was used by the State Printing Office. Nine years later, the 1937 standardized seal once again featured a widened gap of Golden Gate proportions, although it did keep Rowe's snow-capped Sierra Nevada that had replaced the barren foothills of previous editions of the seal. Both features have stayed in the official seal.
The 1937 standardization came about when state employees, wishing to print the seal on blotters for the State Fair, could not find any official design of the seal. This prompted a new law (Statutes of California, 1937, chapter 380), which "established for the first time a definite pictured design with which the master die was 'substantially' to conform, and at the same time established the legality of all previous seals which were essentially the same as this one."
The full color version, accepted as official, was created in 1978 by Jane Van Doren, Graphic Artist for the California State Printing Office (now the California Office of State Publishing). The location of the original painting is unknown.
Popular beliefs and urban legends
Depiction of Fort Point In the 1937 standardized seal there is a building on the far left rear hill that has been interpreted in a variety of ways. The building, along with the break in the mountains, may have been added to give San Francisco Bay a stronger claim on its location being the landscape portrayed in the seal.J. N. Bowman, "The Great Seal of California", California Blue Book (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1950), 159 This building first appeared in unofficial versions of the seal as early as 1875,Robert J. Chandler, To Catch Customers: Grafton Tyler Brown's 1875 Lithographic Sample Sheets (San Francisco: Richard Seibert, 2014) and in most of these, the building was clearly meant to represent Fort Point in San Francisco.The Seal of the City and County of San Francisco features a view of a ship steaming through the Golden Gate, and on each shore stands a structure. On the left is what appears to be Fort Point, and on the right, possibly Point Bonita Light. This seal, adopted by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1859 ("Seal of the City and County of San Francisco", City and County of San Francisco, accessed July 6, 2011), may have influenced later artists of the state sealAlthough the mosaic seal on the second floor of the Ferry Building is of the right place, San Francisco, and right era, 1890s, it does not include the building
Interpretations as Fort Point
However, the structure was given an apparent dome in the 1895 edition of the California Blue Book,California Blue Book (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1895), 299 and it was in this configuration that the building appeared in the 1937 standardization of the official seal. Fort Point has no dome, and it is unknown what building the 1895 artist was attempting to portray.J. N. Bowman reported that the engraver of the 1937 master die, James Cairns, engraved "the object on the left point of land at the 'gate' ... as a fort." (J. N. Bowman, "The Great Seal of California", California Blue Book (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1950), 165) Two years later, Harold F. Wilson, in his interpretation created for the old State Building in Los Angeles (now located inside the Ronald Reagan State Building in that city), retained the dome."State Building Entry Completed – Seal of California in Bronze Laid in $30,000 Portal Walk", Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1939, 8 In 1952, the structure, again with dome, was cast in bronze in the large seal at the west steps of the California State Capitol in Sacramento."The New Look", Sacramento Bee, October 1, 1952, 25
Versions of the Building with a Dome
There is a widespread rumor that the building in the seal found in front of the State Capitol had never appeared in any previous incarnation of the seal, and was meant to represent the chapel at San Quentin State Prison. The rumor states it was added as a "signature" of the prison inmates who cast it, as their alleged request to add their actual signatures was supposedly refused. The unsanctioned addition, so the story goes, was not noticed until it was too late to do anything about it, and so was left as is. Although this 3,400 pound, nearly ten foot wide seal was created in the foundry at San Quentin,California Blue Book (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1958), 667 the building depicted is not the chapel. If the building is taken as San Quentin and if the break in the mountains is taken to be the Golden Gate, then the view must be of the San Francisco Bay Area, looking from east to west. That would the building on the wrong side of the Gate to be San Quentin. No building in this form, including the chapel, has ever existed at San Quentin. The building first appeared in artistic renditions of the seal as early as 1875, decades before this seal was cast in 1952, and was officially added in 1937. The configuration of the building on this seal is very similar to its appearance in the 1937 standardization, which itself was based on the 1895 Blue Book rendition. Four detailed, post-1952 accounts of the seal make no mention of the rumor."State Seal a Product of Convicts", San Diego Union, January 31, 1960, A22Letters Between J. N. Bowman and W. N. Davis, May 1962 (California State Archives, General Information Files, Seals – Great Seal of California)J. N. Bowman, "The Great Seal of California", 1963 (revision of his 1958 article "for some future edition" of the California Blue Book, California State Archives, General Information Files, Seals – Great Seal of California) One of those, a 1959 newspaper article written more than seven years after the placement of the seal, reported that "[t]he only criticism of the convicts' rendition of the seal is that they made the nose of [Minerva] too straight" and that the work "turned out so well it was planned to have the governor, Earl Warren, write the convicts commendations.""6 Ton Seal Defies Crowds", Sacramento Bee, December 27, 1959, B9