US City
Portland’s seal and flag say the same things in two different languages. The seal lists: a ship, a forest, a mountain, a sheaf of grain, a cog wheel. The flag abstracts them into three colours and a star. In 1969 the city council made the designer put the seal on the flag; in 2002, with the same designer, it took it off again.
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| City | Portland, Oregon |
|---|---|
| Seal | Commerce with a spear, pointing to a fir forest and Mt. Hood; a ship, a sheaf, a cog wheel; “1851” |
| Flag | Green, with blue stripes crossing at a star, bordered in yellow |
| Flag designer | R. Douglas Lynch, 1969 |
| Current version | 4 September 2002, Ordinance 176874 — the city seal removed |
| NAVA 2004 survey | 7th of 150 United States city flags |
Flag of Portland — a green field with blue stripes crossing at a four-pointed star, the blue flanked by yellow bands and separated by white fimbriation. Green for the forests, yellow for agriculture and commerce, blue for the rivers. This is the design as restored in 2002, when the city seal was removed from its canton.
A green field crossed by blue stripes that meet at the centre in a four-pointed star — strictly an astroid hypocycloid, a square with its sides curved inward. Yellow bands flank the blue, and thin white lines separate the colours.
The flag was designed in 1969 by R. Douglas Lynch, a graphic designer and former chairman of the Portland Art Commission. The City Council would not take it as drawn: it required the city seal on it, in a dark blue canton, against Lynch’s preference. The altered flag was approved on 17 December 1969 and drew fire at once — for having no roses and no Mt. Hood, and from a group who read the crossing stripes as a “fallen cross”.
Thirty-three years later the Portland Flag Association, with Lynch himself, asked the council to restore the design. Ordinance 176874, adopted on 4 September 2002, made four changes: the seal was removed, the canton was made green, the blue stripes were doubled in width, and the star was made nine times larger. The flag flying today is the 1969 design with the council’s addition deleted.
Set the two emblems side by side and they carry the same inventory. The seal draws a ship on a river; the flag has blue stripes. The seal draws a forest and a mountain; the flag is green. The seal draws a sheaf of grain and a cog wheel; the flag has yellow for agriculture and commerce. The seal lists, to be read at arm’s length; the flag abstracts, to be read across a street. The 1969 flag asked one object to do both jobs.
Seal of Portland — a female figure representing Commerce, holding a spear and pointing towards a fir forest with Mt. Hood behind it, a six-pointed star above her head, a three-masted ship and a steam stack on a river, a cog wheel and sledge hammer, and a sheaf of grain. The rim reads City of Portland, Oregon and 1851.
The city code sets the seal out item by item, down to its size: 1¾ inches across. At the centre stands a female figure holding a spear in her right hand and pointing with her left towards a fir forest with Mt. Hood behind it. Above her head is a six-pointed star. Beside her are a three-masted ship and a steam stack with smoke on a river, a cog wheel and a sledge hammer, and a sheaf of grain. The rim reads “City of Portland, Oregon” and “1851”, the year of the city’s first charter.
The figure is Commerce, and everything around her is something Portland lived on: the river trade, sail giving way to steam in the same picture; the grain of the farmland behind the port; industry in the wheel and the hammer; timber in the forest. It is a nineteenth-century seal in the full sense — crowded, allegorical and exact.
A female figure representing Commerce, holding a spear and pointing towards a fir forest with Mt. Hood behind it, with a six-pointed star above her head, a three-masted ship and a steam stack on a river, a cog wheel and sledge hammer, and a sheaf of grain. The rim reads “City of Portland, Oregon” and “1851”.
Green for the forests, yellow for agriculture and commerce, and blue for the rivers, which meet at the star in the centre. The white lines only separate the colours.
R. Douglas Lynch (1913–2009), in 1969. The council made him add the city seal in a dark blue canton; the seal was removed in 2002, restoring his design.
The seal was removed, the canton was made green, the blue stripes were doubled in width and the star was made nine times larger, by Ordinance 176874 of 4 September 2002.
A note on method. Both emblems are described from the city code and the published descriptions, not from the drawing. The ordinance number for the 2002 revision is sometimes given in the secondary literature as that of the 2014 colour amendment; 176874 is the one attached to the amendment adopted on 4 September 2002.
Last reviewed by the Emblema Mundi editorial team on 30 September 2026.