Last modified: 2003-03-14 by michael p. smuda
with permission of Jens Pattke
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Yolo County is located about 85 miles northeast of San Francisco and just west of Sacramento. It is predominately an agricultural area producing rice as a main crop. The University of California at Davis is a well know agriculture and veterinary medicine school. In the early part of the 20th century, there was a disease that threatened to destroy all wine grapes in the world. Davis discovered a solution which saved the plants.
The original flag of Yolo County is a rectangle with a blue ("skies above")horizontal band on the top 1/7th with "YOLO COUNTY" written in white. The bottom 1/7th is a brown ("soil below") horizontal band with "FOUNDED 1850" in white, the year the county was created. In the white/buff center 5/7ths is a figure of the goddess Ceres in a white dress with wheat in her right hand and produce in her left. It was designed by Sue Handley in 1938. It is believed that the Yolo County is the second earliest "known" California county to develop a flag.
The current version of the flag was created by committee in 1997. In addition to Ceres, the figure is superimposed in front of a green map of Yolo County. The middle band is white.