California's flag carries the name of a country that existed for about three weeks and the portrait of an animal the state wiped out. A grizzly bear walks across a white field above the words "CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC," with a red star in the corner and a red stripe below. Every element traces back to a June morning in 1846 when a few dozen armed settlers took over the plaza at Sonoma, and the exact bear on today's flag has a name, a capture story, and a taxidermied body in San Francisco.
Three weeks of the California Republic
In June 1846, Alta California was Mexican territory, thinly governed and filling with American settlers who held no land titles and feared expulsion. War between the United States and Mexico had already broken out to the east, though word had not reached the coast. On June 14, around thirty settlers rode into Sonoma, arrested the retired Mexican general Mariano Vallejo (who, in the anticlimax of the whole affair, favored American annexation and served the rebels wine while they negotiated), and declared an independent California Republic.
A new country needs a flag. William L. Todd, a young settler and a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln, painted one on a piece of unbleached cloth: a five-pointed star at the hoist, a grizzly bear facing it, a strip of red along the bottom, and the words "California Republic." The materials were whatever Sonoma had, by most accounts including brick dust, and possibly berry juice, for the red. The star deliberately echoed the lone star of the 1836 California revolt flag, and beyond that Texas. The bear was chosen because grizzlies were the most feared animal in the territory. Todd's rendering was rough enough that some onlookers read it as a pig.
The republic issued no laws and formed no real government. On July 9, 1846, US forces raised the American flag at Sonoma and the Bear Flag came down, twenty-five days after it went up. Todd's original went to the Society of California Pioneers in 1855 and survived as a relic for half a century, until April 18, 1906, when it burned with much of San Francisco in the fires that followed the earthquake.
Statehood first, flag much later
California became the 31st state in 1850 but did not adopt a flag for another six decades. The Bear Flag lived on informally in the meantime, flown at anniversaries and kept warm by pioneer societies. On February 3, 1911, Governor Hiram Johnson signed legislation making the Bear Flag the official state flag, fixing the elements everyone already recognized: white field, red stripe, red star, grizzly, and the words "California Republic."
The 1911 law left the details loose, and for four decades flag makers drew whatever bear they liked. Some bears ambled, some stood, some looked, in the tradition of Todd's original, only approximately ursine. In 1953 the legislature ended the improvisation with a bill signed by Governor Earl Warren that standardized the design down to the grass plot under the bear's feet. The specifications set proportions of 2:3 and named the colors, including Old Glory Red for the star and stripe, Maple Sugar and Seal brown for the bear, and Irish Green for the grass. The artwork was prepared by Donald Graeme Kelley, and Kelley did not invent his bear.
Monarch
The bear on every California flag made since 1953 is a portrait of a specific animal. In 1889, William Randolph Hearst, then building the San Francisco Examiner into a sensation, sent reporter Allan Kelly into the mountains to capture a live California grizzly as a publicity stunt. After months of effort Kelly brought one back from Ventura County. Hearst named him Monarch, after the Examiner's masthead slogan ("Monarch of the Dailies"), and the bear went on display in San Francisco, spending most of his remaining life at Golden Gate Park.
Monarch died in 1911, the same year the flag became official. He was mounted and preserved at the California Academy of Sciences, where his body remains. When Kelley needed an authoritative grizzly for the 1953 standardization, he worked from Monarch. The result is a closed loop of California history: a newspaper stunt bear, captured to sell papers, became the permanent face of the state.
There is a darker loop underneath it. The California grizzly is extinct. The last one in the state was killed in the early 1920s, and the last credible sighting was in 1924 in Sequoia National Park. California put the grizzly on its flag in 1911, made it the state animal in 1953, and has not had a wild one in a century. Proposals to reintroduce grizzlies to the Sierra surface periodically and have gone nowhere.
Design standing and the flag today
The Bear Flag placed 13th of 72 in the North American Vexillological Association's 2001 design survey, scoring 7.00 out of 10, the best showing of any US state flag that includes lettering. The words "CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC" break NAVA's no-lettering rule, but the flag's strong pictorial center carries it; a walking bear is identifiable at distances where a state seal is a smudge.
Like the handful of genuinely loved state flags, California's has a life beyond flagpoles. The bear appears on state agency logos, university merchandise, surf brands, and an endless run of parody flags that swap the grizzly for anything culturally current. The official design remains the 1953 specification: still walking, still extinct, still labeled with the name of a republic that lasted twenty-five days.
References
[1] "Flag of California," Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_California
[2] "The Bear Flag Revolt," US National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/bearflag.htm
[3] "Bear Flag Revolt," History.com. https://www.history.com/articles/bear-flag-revolt
[4] California Government Code, sections 420-429, state flag specifications (1953 standardization).
[5] "The Fascinating History of the California Bear Flag," Flags for Good. https://flagsforgood.com/blogs/news/the-fascinating-history-of-the-california-bear-flag
[6] Ted Kaye, "The American State/Provincial Flag Survey," Raven: A Journal of Vexillology, Vol. 8 (2001), NAVA.