The
Great Seal of the State of California was adopted at the
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
stateA U.S. state is any one of 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government . Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile...
Constitutional Convention of 1849 and redesigned in 1937. The seal features the Roman goddess
MinervaMinerva was the Roman goddess whom Hellenizing Romans from the second century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of warriors, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic and the inventor of music...
, the goddess of wisdom and war; a
California grizzly bearThe brown bear is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America. It weighs 100 to 680 kilograms and its largest subspecies, the Kodiak Bear, rivals the polar bear as the largest member of the bear family, and as the largest land based predator.While the brown...
(the official state animal) feeding on
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
vines, representing California's
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
production; a sheaf of grain, representing
agricultureAgriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and...
; a miner, representing the
California Gold RushThe California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered by James Wilson Marshall at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California. News of the discovery soon spread, resulting in some 300,000 men, women, and children coming to California from the rest of the United States and...
and the
miningMining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an ore body, vein or seam. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt and potash...
industry; sailing ships, representing the state's economic power; and
San Francisco BaySan Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
or the
Sacramento RiverThe Sacramento River is the longest river entirely within the state of California. Starting at the confluence of the South Fork and Middle Fork of the Sacramento River, near Mount Shasta in the Cascade Range mountains, the Sacramento flows south for , through the northern Central Valley of...
.
The
Great Seal of the State of California was adopted at the
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
stateA U.S. state is any one of 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government . Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile...
Constitutional Convention of 1849 and redesigned in 1937. The seal features the Roman goddess
MinervaMinerva was the Roman goddess whom Hellenizing Romans from the second century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of warriors, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic and the inventor of music...
, the goddess of wisdom and war; a
California grizzly bearThe brown bear is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America. It weighs 100 to 680 kilograms and its largest subspecies, the Kodiak Bear, rivals the polar bear as the largest member of the bear family, and as the largest land based predator.While the brown...
(the official state animal) feeding on
grapeA grape is the non-climacteric fruit, botanically a true berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, and grape seed oil...
vines, representing California's
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
production; a sheaf of grain, representing
agricultureAgriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and...
; a miner, representing the
California Gold RushThe California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered by James Wilson Marshall at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California. News of the discovery soon spread, resulting in some 300,000 men, women, and children coming to California from the rest of the United States and...
and the
miningMining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an ore body, vein or seam. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock salt and potash...
industry; sailing ships, representing the state's economic power; and
San Francisco BaySan Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
or the
Sacramento RiverThe Sacramento River is the longest river entirely within the state of California. Starting at the confluence of the South Fork and Middle Fork of the Sacramento River, near Mount Shasta in the Cascade Range mountains, the Sacramento flows south for , through the northern Central Valley of...
. The phrase "
EurekaEureka is an exclamation used as an interjection to celebrate a discovery.-Archimedes:...
," meaning "I have found it!" is the California state motto.
The geography is not an exact view from any one place in California, 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."
The original design of the seal was by
Robert S. GarnettRobert Selden Garnett was a career military officer, serving in the United States Army until the American Civil War, when he became a Confederate States Army brigadier general. He was the first general officer killed in the Civil War.-Early life and career:Garnett was born at the family plantation...
and engraved by
Albert KunerGeorg Albrecht Ferdinand Kuner The engraver of California's State Seal, which was designed by Robert S. Garnett...
. However, Garnett was unwilling to introduce the design to the 1849 state constitutional convention, so
Caleb LyonCaleb Dell Lyon was governor of Idaho Territory from 1864 to 1865 during the last half of the American Civil War....
introduced it as his own design, with Garnett's approval. Garnett later became the first general to be killed in the
Civil WarThe American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America...
, where he served as a
ConfederateThe Confederate States of America was a separatist political entity existing between 1861 to 1865, established by eleven southern slave states of the United States of America, each of which had previously declared their secession from the United States...
general.
The city of
Eureka, CaliforniaEureka is the county seat and principal city in Humboldt County, California, United States. Located adjacent to Humboldt Bay 270 miles north of San Francisco, the port city of 26,097 residents is situated near extensive preserves of the world's tallest trees - the Coast Redwoods...
, uses the same seal, being the only US location to use the state seal as its seal.
California State Normal School
In 1862, the California Legislature created the
California State Normal SchoolThe California State Normal School was a teaching college founded on May 2, 1862, whose original campus later became both the California State University and its San José State University campus....
(now
San Jose State UniversitySan José State University is a public university located in San José, California, United States. It is the founding campus of the California State University system...
), and bestowed its Great Seal upon the school, as shown at right. Although the University's version of the Seal still graces its Tower Hall and several other buildings on the San Jose State campus, its fate as the school's official Seal is unclear. In recent years the school has also used a different seal depicting its Tower Hall building.
Original 1849 description
External links