u/Busy_Cry1631

And another notch on u/HistoricalTrip5247's belt! Goddamn, whoever this designer is, they came outta nowhere like an RKO. (Dated reference? Probably.) Congratulations on a simple but stellar (no pun intended) flag seizing the day.

And for our very last American CCS contest, it's off to our nation's capital, and NAVA's 2004 pick for the best city flag in the Union! Good luck, and I'll see you on the other side... of the 49th parallel.

Results: strawpoll-QrgewoE2Xyp-4d73e0c4-9b29-11f1-aa11-e1302f661ba8.xlsx

And our end-of-an-era tour concludes with NAVA's 2004 pick for the best city flag in the Union: that of its capital. What probably tips Washington over the top is that similar to Maryland, it is a proper banner of arms -- those of George Washington -- and that's always worth a few brownie points. Remixing this one will be as difficult as Maryland's but let's give it one last shot.

The flag is the same as the current one, with the alteration of having a blue chief upon which rest the three mullets now in silver as the field, standing for the three branches of Government seated in the nation's capital and tying its colors more explicitly to the national flag.

Also included as potential benchmark designs are Charles Dunn's and the Office of the Quartermaster General's proposals from 1924.

And here we are already. Wow. End of an era, truly, this time. Let's go out on top.

The flag is a simple alteration of the current stars and stripes, retaining all of the symbolism thereof. The blue canton containing the fifty mullets of five points in alternate rows of sixes and fives has been stretched into a tierce two-fifths the width of the field. The fifty mullets are enlarged and disposed in alternating rows of five and four, while on either side are added six golden torches enflamed in silver disposed in pale, standing for the three western (Guam, the Northern Marianas, and American Samoa) and three eastern (District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) districts and territories under the control of the Union and their desire for greater rights and liberties.

And that, as they say, was all he wrote. I'll see you across the 49th parallel.

Everything's bigger in Texas, especially stars on flags. One need only look at half the major cities in the state to observe this trend in action. However, Houston, the largest, rather underperforms relative to others within its own state, and that's a damn shame, given the prestige it has earned time and again across its history. Here's how I remediated the matter.

The flag is a banner of arms (as one might expect) parted per pale and incorporating elements from the current seal, Texan iconography, and the armorial bearings of Clan Houston -- or Huston back in Britain. In the first half a blue field bears a silver mullet and in base a golden plow pulling to sinister, representing the newly risen Republic -- and now state -- of Texas and its agricultural riches. The second half is a modification of the arms of Sam Houston -- first and third president and seventh governor of Texas, and the city's namesake -- consisting of a chevron chequy of silver and black between three locomotive wheels (in lieu of the martlets on the original) on a field of gold, standing for progress and transportation of agricultural riches; indeed, the city was and is a major railroad hub.

A little fun fact about the Clan Houston arms is that the chevron chequy is depicted as silver and blue in the clan's official arms, as the shield is derived from that of Clan Stewart via the exchanging of the fess chequy upon THOSE arms for a chevron and the addition of the three black martlets. The version Sam Houston bore is a further derivation with a slightly differently tinctured chevron.

And our very last capital before the national contest next week! Technically, the island of Saipan is one municipality with settlements therein, similar to Puerto Rico but without official status as the barrios possess, so the whole island is the official capital. Matters are further complicated as the legislative and executive branches of the territorial government are on Capitol Hill, but the supreme court is in the village of Susupe, an arrangement shared with two states (California's supreme court is in San Francisco rather than Sacramento, and Louisiana's in New Orleans rather than Bâton-Rouge). Still, by dint of two of three branches of government being seated there, Capitol Hill -- currently home to 979 as of last census -- is often treated as the de facto capital municipality. That confusing explanation aside, here's how this one goes.

On a field of blue lies a green mount ensigned by a silver sun of twelve rays, between two grey haligi each ensigned of a silver mullet of five points. The green mount stands for the hill itself, and the blue for the sky above and ocean below. The haligi with their mullets atop are the territory's legislative and executive branches which have been seated in the village since 1962, and form two of the pillars that uphold the local government as the latte stones did the Chamorro houses of old. The silver sun is actually that of the KMT, forming a reference to their party flag and the canton of the Republic of China's, as Capitol Hill was first built up by the CIA in 1948 to train Chinese Nationalist guerillas.

A simple flag for a famous county that absolutely SHOULD have one! Organized from part of Vermilion County in 1833 and named both for its flat and open fields and for the county of the same name in Ohio, Champaign's initial rise to prosperity chiefly owes to the laying of the Chicago branch of the Illinois Central Railroad and the founding of the University of Illinois's central campus by land grant; an airport and mass transit district followed. The economy did suffer a recession from the closure of Chanute Air Force Base in 1993, but business and academic presence have stay strong, particularly in the twin and only incorporated cities of Champaign and Urbana -- the latter being the primate city and county seat. The full county is home to 205,865 residents as of last census, tenth in the state.

The flag is a modified horizontal triband with a fess per pale of blue and orange bearing two mullets of six points counterchanged, upon a green field. The field is a reference to the open fields that are the namesake of both this county and its Ohioan predecessor, while the fess and counterchanged mullets reference the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana and the colors of the University of Illinois -- the main campus of which lies between and is almost surrounded by them.

Almost the end of an era! Our last subnational contest for the Union, and it's our most recently acquired territorial possession. Under UN trusteeship and American control from 1945 to 1986, and only then becoming a fully incorporated territory, this homeland of the Chamorro and Carolinians flies one of the few flags technically classified a seal on blue that actually passes muster; using the excellent design on the field is a great choice, and I think Grey seriously underrates this flag in his territories flag ranking. This is solid B if not low A material. Nevertheless, it's time to take one last stab at redesigning our insular territories, so here goes.

The field is divided per chevron ployé throughout in silver and blue and charged with three mullets of five points counterchanged, the last of which debruising a haligi within and surmounting the base of a mwarmwar, as on the current flag. The blue stands for the Pacific and the Marianas Trench, as currently, while the white stands for the open sky above the seas and the very first Austronesian voyages being to these pristine islands. The blue mullets stand for the Chamorro and Carolinian voyagers to the land, while the silver stands for the dominion they created together and the Union that now holds dominion over it -- the ethnicity of the first peoples reinforced by the haligi and mwarmwar accompanying the latter. The whole composition is a reference to the Virgin Mary and her patronage over the whole archipelago, via the arms of the Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel -- the Carmelites for short -- the variation on whose arms used by the Order of Discalced Carmelites comprises the upper half of the arms of the Diocese of Chalan-Kanoa, covering all the Marianas save Guam.

And now for a story of a small town that adapted and prospered when others did not. In 1915, the boll weevil found its way into the cotton fields of Coffee County and almost completely obliterated cultivation. Most towns dealt with subsequent economic collapse, but one town, officially incorporated just 29 years earlier, did not, and that town was Enterprise. The nearly bankrupt farmers of the city and parts surrounding diversified their crop portfolios, starting with peanuts, aiming to recoup their losses; not only did they succeed, but they turned the city into the nation's leading peanut producer within two years of the initial outbreak. In gratitude to the opportunity the plague had given them, local businessman Ben Fleming proposed and upfronted the money for a monument to their unlikely herald of prosperity, and on December 11th, 1919, the Boll Weevil Monument was dedicated -- the one and only monument to an agricultural pest in the world. The weevil itself would not be added until thirty years after the original statue supporting it.

Enterprise is today a small city of 28,711 in Coffee County and part of Dale County, and it sits just outside Fort Rucker.

The new flag takes the basic concept of the monument and the seal depicting it, and it simplifies them down. The flag is a basic triband of celeste with a red pale, the which charged with a weevil tergiant above a pedestal supported by two hands, all in gold.

And another tie forces us to the upvotes for our top entrant, so congrats once more to u/HistoricalTrip5247 for another spectacular victory with their flaming clover banner! They might be the one to beat in future!

And so, for our last Capital City Saturday in our territories -- the next presumably being at the national level with DC -- we move on to the isle of Saipan. Now, this whole island is governed as one municipality, but similarly to Guam, there are divisions at village level, and so the village of Capitol Hill wherein are seated the legislative and executive branches (the judicial branch being in the nearby village of Susupe) will be our capital. Best of luck, and let's finish strong.

Results: strawpoll-e7ZJakwK5g3-4f75bc9e-951b-11f1-a04c-b44efcd459bc.xlsx

And another carte blanche contest! A surprisingly continental array of flags for this island town, though not surprising given the history. But who's done it best? Two votes maximum, polling closes on Monday at 1200 EST.

Poll: https://strawpoll.com/e7ZJakwK5g3

The second redesign is the same as the first, with the addition of a green bordure, semy alternately of ramps in gold with silver bulb and roots, and chrysanthemums in gold. The green bordure with the plants refers to the city's motto, Latin for city in a garden, with the ramps coming from the city's name -- derived from the Miami-Illinois šikaakwa, meaning that very plant -- and the chrysanthemums being the official flower since 1966, also thanks to Richard Daly.

Chicago possesses quite possibly the single best city flag in all the Union, save perhaps that of Washington, DC. It is a point of such pride in the city that firemen, EMTs, and policemen who die in the line of duty are given state funerals with their coffins draped in it and not the Stars and Stripes. Take it from someone whose mother is a native Chicagoan; this is right up there with the Chicago hot dog on things you don't fuck with. ...Let's do it anyway.

The basic design principles and symbolism of the flag remain intact, but the two bars have been made wavy to better represent their respective bodies of water. The red mullets of six points retain their historical significance -- although the granular symbolism of each point is here excluded as unnecessary detail -- and are now joined by a fifth, as has often been speculated upon. That in base stands for the founding of Old Fort Dearborn in 1803, the three between the bars the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the expositions of 1893 and 1939, and that in chief the initiation of a fission reaction by the Chicago Pile-1 reactor in 1942 -- as championed by Richard Joseph Daley in the 1960s.

Here we are again with carte blanche to design something for a city without any flag its own. It turns out that the names and historied past of this Danish outpost yield an unexpected but brilliantly simple symbolism. Here's how that translates to the flag.

The flag is the bicolor of Charlotte Amalie's native house and duchy of Hessen-Kassel, augmented with charges in honor of its former and present namesakes. In the chief portion are three silver covered tankards, standing in number for the three historic districts of downtown -- Kongens Kvarter (King's Quarter), Dronningens Kvarter (Queen's Quarter), and Kronprinsens Kvarter (Crown Prince's Quarter). The city was also formerly known as Taphus (Taphouse) for its many beer and rum halls, hence the choice of tankards. In the base, meanwhile, is the royal monogram, in red and without the royal crown. of Charlotte-Amalie herself as queen-consort to Christian V, the town renamed after her in 1691 and ever since, save a period from 1921 to 1936, where it was known by the Union as Saint Thomas.

And now, a flag for one of the coolest small towns of Northwestern Colorado. Meeker is one of only two incorporated towns in the whole of Rio Blanco County, being its seat and largest municipality, home to 2,374 as of last census. A ranching community and regional hunting hotspot within easy travel distance of several state and national parks and protected wildernesses, Meeker is also well known as a retreat for high society -- notable among them no less a man than Michael Bloomberg -- and the home of the Meeker Classic Sheepdog Trials. The town is named in memory of homesteader and Indian agent Nathan Cook Meeker, also well known as the founder of the Union Colony further east in the same state -- now known as the city of Greeley. Meeker, an ardent evangelical with no experience dealing with indigenous peoples, was given the position of Indian agent to the White River Ute Reservation by Governor Henry Moore Teller, where he strove to assimilate the Utes into a Christian sedentary-agricultural life. Fierce conflict with the Indian agents and miners encroaching on the territory culminated in the Meeker Massacre, where after Meeker got into a fight with and was driven from his home by a Ute leader named Johnson, a whole 191 soldiers were dispatched from Fort Steele in Wyoming to suppress the Utes -- far more than Meeker had requested for his assistance. On September 29th, 1879, as the Army encroached on the reservation, the Utes set fire to the agency headquarters and killed eleven of the staff, Meeker among them, taking five women and children as hostages for the following 23 days, including Meeker's wife and daughter. The ensuing Ute War ended in 1880 with the entirety of the Utes in Colorado displaced onto reservations in Utah.

The flag is a modified banner of the Meeker coat of arms -- two golden lions combatant supporting a sword in pale proper above two silver crescents in base, all on a field of blue -- with the changes reflecting the town's history and location, as well as the life and death of its namesake. The shield of arms is augmented by a gold tierce semy of eleven gouttes-de-sang, for Nathanial Meeker and his fellow deceased in the massacre; in the town's proper coat of arms, this would become a chief. Within the arms themselves, the lions combatant are replaced by elks and the sword in pale by a flintlock musket proper, in reference to both the conflict and the prominence of Meeker as a hunting destination. The two crescents are retained, and between them and the elks and musket is a silver river in fess, both a reference to the White River which runs through the town and to my own redesign for the county named after it in Spanish.

Congratulations to u/HistoricalTrip5247 on taking a double with not only the community winner for American Samoa, but now this excellent derivation for Pago Pago. Well played, and right in keeping with Kaye's argument for meaningful derivation.

And this week, it's carte blanche once more! Charlotte Amalie is also without its own flag, so it's up to us to give them one.

The last time the U.S. Virgin Islands made the news, it was because of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by a certain sex-trafficking financier upon his very own islet of Little St. Thomas. A pity, too, as there is a great history of empires, and a lovely time in general, to be found on the three major isles and 47 lesser islets. While the existing flag is actually a fairly solid mid-tier composition that cleverly adapts national symbolism -- and even makes lettering look handsome -- it could stand to do a little more with its design. Here's how I did it.

The base of this flag is a 2:3 Nordic cross flag in the colors of the Dannebrog reversed, referring to the original Danish possession of the islands. In the dexter chief are the letters VI in blue, for the territory's name, and in dexter base is a sheaf of three green arrows for the main isles of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix -- referring both to those in blue held in the sinister claw of the bald eagle on the current flag, and to the martyrdom of Saint Ursula and her fabled virgin companions, after which Columbus originally named the isles.

A surprisingly large one to lack a flag, this one. Hernando County is located on the west-central coast of Florida, where it forms part of the so-called Nature Coast of that state. Organized on February 24th, 1843, and named after the conquistador Hernando de Soto, the county is seated in Brooksville, with its largest community being Spring Hill and an overall population of 194,515 as of the last census.

The flag is a banner of the original arms of de Soto -- a black eagle on a blue field, within a red bordure charged with eight black open padlocks -- with the added touches that the bordure is now a more Floridian orange, and the black eagle of the original is replaced with a bald eagle in its proper colors.

Carte blanche! Our first ever such competition in CCS history. No reference point, just skill against skill alone. Best of luck. 2 votes max, open until the stroke of midnight EST on Tuesday.

Poll: https://strawpoll.com/PKgleQROQZp

And next up in our metropolitan tour of flags, the city of angels gets a long overdue refresh. The Fiesta Flag, as it is known, is an excellent base let down by a lackluster seal stamped atop it, so let's see if we can't do it a little better.

The base field tierced per pale dancetty is here modified into a field per pale indented of green and red, with a Canadian pale dancetty of gold, still standing for the major crops (olives in green, citrus in gold, and wine in red) of California, while also alluding to former Spanish and Mexican rule of the area. The biggest difference is in the figure of the angel; in addition to being a reference to the city's name -- derived ultimately from the Marian epithet Our Lady, Queen of the Angels -- and having wings counterchanged to the field beneath the pale, the white halo represents the short-lived California Republic and the white robe the Union. The angel herself has the countenance of a Tongva woman, with indigenous skin, hair, and eye color -- a reminder of the honor owed the original inhabitants of the Los Angeles Basin.

P.S.: For those wondering why I put the current flag in my posts, I compose these assuming a general audience member has stumbled upon our forum knowing nothing about our subject matter or work, and so I add the current flag to the gallery so they can both learn about it and compare it to the rework.

Our first carte blanche CCS, and it's ALL THE WAY OUT HERE! The rainiest harbor in the world and the home of its largest tuna cannery, O le Maputasi (the Mauga's House) is also the southernmost subnational capital in the Union and the only such in the Southern Hemisphere. Why, therefore should it have no flag of its own? Let's fix that.

On a golden field lies a green dormant shield volcano issuing from a base of waves of water, symbolic of the tropical sun rising over Pago Volcano, the namesake shield volcano of the city, and the waters of Pago Pago Harbor, named after the city and formed from the southeastern caldera. Upon the volcano lies a mullet of five points above and between two hands in benediction, the dexter bendwise, and the sinister bendwise sinister. Pago Pago likely means place of prayer or altar with the reduplication of the toponym for emphasis, whence the hands in benediction, while the mullet stands for the city's capital status.