What’s the Story Behind the Seal of the City of Santa Barbara?

What’s the history behind the seal of the City of Santa Barbara? It has two boats and a bay that doesn’t look a whole lot like Santa Barbara. —S.

I thought this would be so easy, but it wasn’t. The folks at the Gledhill Library at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum narrowed down the origin of the city’s current seal to sometime around 1900 but couldn’t uncover anything about the design. I asked everyone I could think of, hitting one brick wall after another. Was it really possible that Santa Barbara has a city seal that no one knows the meaning of?

Then the reference staff at the Santa Barbara Public Library stepped up. The following is from Library Systems Analyst Kathleen Kosiec, who was assisted by Jace Turner, Adult Education & Information Services Librarian; Lisa Neubert, Collections Librarian; and Justin Chou, Library Technician.

To research your question, we first reached out to one of our graphic designers and our architectural historian in Community Development. They both mentioned that they often receive this question but didn’t have a definitive answer. One of our City IT webmasters suggested we contact the City Clerk’s Office to see if there might be anything in the old written archives at City Hall.

After reviewing the City Charter and Municipal Code, we searched again using the term “corporate seal” instead of “city seal” to better match the language in the Charter. My colleague Jace discovered an announcement in The Independent on January 3, 1900, noting that Ordinance 332—adopting the seal—passed on January 2, 1900. Our Deputy City Clerk also managed to locate some meeting minutes referencing the seal from April 8, 1872, and looked up the January 1900 minutes for us. According to the Charter, the seal can only be changed by ordinance. Since the current ordinance language closely matches the 1900 ordinance, it appears the seal has not changed since its adoption in 1900.

As for the meaning behind the images in the seal, we haven’t been able to find much documentation explaining why the bay, ships, and rising sun were specifically chosen. However, one possible clue comes from the City’s Coat of Arms, which appears in the tympanum at Central Library:

From the library website: “In the center is featured the Coat of Arms for the City of Santa Barbara, which depicts two Spanish ships sailing the ocean. The rolling green hills represent the Santa Ynez mountain range.”

My colleague Justin reached out to the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum executive director Greg Gorga. These comments are mainly his opinion, but he gave us permission to share: “If I recall the City seal correctly, it is really not an accurate representation of Santa Barbara. I do not recognize the coastline that is displayed, the ships are hard to pinpoint, and not what the earliest Spanish ships would have looked like (e.g. the Cabrillo ship San Salvador at the Maritime Museum of San Diego), and the lighthouse tower is not what our Santa Barbara Lighthouse looked like. (We have a model of that lighthouse on display here.) I always believe the lighthouse should be the one that was on the Mesa, and the ships depicted should have been a Chumash Tomol and the San Salvador.”

In conclusion, while we can’t say for certain why these particular images were selected or exactly when they first appeared, it seems likely that the current seal has been in use since 1900. The ships are thought to represent Spanish ships sailing the Pacific, with the Santa Ynez Mountains in the background—an enduring image of Santa Barbara’s coastal location and history.

A big thanks to the SBPL! And if anyone out there has further info, please chime in.

Got a question you’d like investigated? Email sitelinesb@gmail.com or text 917-209-6473.

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Previous Burning Questions:
••• Butterfly Beach steps, green power lines, SBAG license plates, and more
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••• What are these sculptures on the Riviera?
↓↓↓ What’s the origin story of this fence on Hot Springs Road?
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