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Bayport, Minnesota (U.S.)

Washington County

image by R. Nathan Bliss, 15 July 1996
Jorge Candeias, 4 August 2005

Design of the circa 1996 flag
Circa 1990 flag

See also:

Design of the 1996 flag

About 6 years ago I was mayor of Bayport Minnesota. At that time as a gift to the city when I left office I presented a flag design for the city's use. The city made about 8 flags of the design, some were sold and the rest used at city hall. A couple of months ago the current mayor announced that the city had run out of flags and recommended having new flags with the city logo on them. My first thought was "Oh no! they are going to do the logo-on-a-bed sheet flag, and probably write BAYPORT under the logo". I was only half right; they were not going to put the name of the city on the flag, but they were indeed going to slap the logo on a white piece of cloth and call it the city flag.

I sent a letter to the city council suggesting that this would be a mistake, and that I would be willing to offer my services to design something more unique (almost every city around here has a logo-on-a-bed sheet flag, although some of the more creative ones use a blue bed sheet to match the state flag). They did not reply, so I sat down and designed about 30 flags, all incorporating the logo, and running with a blue/green (water/land) theme that the logo and the old city flag used. I filtered these thirty down to 12. Not necessarily the best twelve, but twelve workable designs that showed different styles, and presented them to the council. This is a case where a picture was worth a thousand words, they were impressed with the designs and wanted to talk about them.

The one I am sending here is the one they picked (and my personal favorite). The humorous thing about the design, which I did not mention at the presentation, but will share with FOTW is where the design idea came from. I was taking my lunch break at work and sitting in my car with the window partway down. That design is the shape of the partially opened window! I thought it would look good, I think it did. Naturally, when I made my presentation to the city council I did not tell them "this shape represents an open window bringing in the fresh air of new ideas" :-), but gave the design the meaning of the St. Croix river curving past the city with the gold representing the prosperity given by the combination of river and land. The white triangle symbolizes the three smaller communities that combined to form Bayport. (For those of you in Maine, one of those small villages was called Bangor and was settled by lumbermen from Maine, in fact our "main" street is spelled M A I N E). And of course the city's logo is included in the flag design. To give credit where it is due, the logo was designed by Craig Parent, a local graphic artist.

R. Nathan Bliss, 15 July 1996

Circa 1990 flag

image by R. Nathan Bliss, 7 February 1996

The flag is a stylization of the city's shoreline with the Saint Croix River. The blue and green obviously represent water and land. The two shapes and colours also represent the opposing forces of land and water without which there would be no bay, and hence no trade nor industry. The Yin/Yang design also represents the sharing of opposing views which makes democracy work.
R. Nathan Bliss, 7 February 1996

The flag of the city of Bayport, Minnesota, was designed by the then mayor Nathan Bliss and was approved by motion of the city council 3 December 1990. The prototype was sewn by Joan Mckeen, and is now the property of the the local Boy Scout troop (Indianhead council troop 113) and is carried by the scouts in the city's annual Memorial Day Parade.
R. Nathan Bliss, 7 February 1996