PERSPECTIVE : Pithy Mottoes Keep Cities From Being Expressionless

To find the pulse of a city or gauge the hopes and ideals of its citizenry, take a clue from the town motto.

In an era of gated communities and 100-mile commutes, earnest civic slogans may seem like corny throwbacks to an earlier time. But many residents and city leaders still take their aphorisms seriously, saying they help shape a community’s identity and foster pride.

“It states the purpose of our city,” said Councilman Harry Dotson of Stanton, whose slogan is “Community Pride and Forward Vision.” “I hope it gives our residents a charge and direction to become a part of the community.”

Fullerton and San Juan Capistrano are now searching for mottoes, and several other cities have tinkered with their slogans in the past few years, including La Habra, which proclaimed itself “A Caring Community.”

The succinct statements of civic pride date back to the 1920s, when writers composed impassioned songs and poems celebrating farming villages such as Santa Ana, Tustin and Anaheim.

Santa Ana had an especially colorful song, which according to Jim Sleeper’s “Orange County Almanac” included the verse: “We’ve got ginger, we’ve got snap / We know how to keep ‘er on the map.”

Since then, slogans have come and gone as municipalities evolved, from rural villages to bedroom communities, then to so-called edge cities--job-rich areas with emerging skylines.

Most of Orange County’s 31 cities have official mottoes, and many of the rest have unofficial ones.

“People who drive through Orange County sometimes say they can’t tell one city from another,” said Janet Huston, executive director of the League of California Cities. “But cities feel they each have their own unique identities. The mottoes are a way of accentuating those identities.”

Increasingly, communities are selecting slogans with an eye on marketing themselves to prospective businesses and residents.

In Fullerton, the leading motto contender is “The Education Community,” which would acknowledge the five institutions of higher learning based in the city: Cal State Fullerton, Western State University College of Law, Pacific Christian College, Fullerton College and Southern California College of Optometry.

Many business leaders favor the slogan because it would highlight an asset that might lure employers to Fullerton, which has been hit by defense cutbacks.

“There’s a lot of competition for business among cities,” said Jim Alexander, controller of MG Disposal and treasurer of the Fullerton Chamber of Commerce. “You have to project something very positive. . . . ‘The Education Community’ really spells out what Fullerton is about.”

Huntington Beach also had commerce in mind when it appropriated the copyright to “Surf City” in 1991.

Though the community’s official motto remains “The City of Expanding Horizons,” Surf City is used in tourism promotions and marketing for volleyball tournaments, surfing competitions and concerts on the beach. There is even a Surf City retail shop that sells beachwear, handbags and T-shirts.

“It would be hard to market ‘The City of Expanding Horizons,’ ” said Ron Hagan, Huntington Beach’s community services director. “Surf City is our official moniker. It provides a distinctive identity . . . and conjures up a lifestyle.”

Stanton has gone in the opposite direction, dropping a commercial motto in favor of a more personal one.

The city was known for decades as “The Crossroads of Vacationland.” The name made sense in the 1950s and 1960s, when its central location between Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm made it a popular lodging spot for tourists.

By the 1980s, however, Stanton was battling crime and prostitution. City leaders decided they needed a new motto that would foster unity and optimism, so they chose “Community Pride and Forward Vision.”

“Every time you heard anything in the media about Stanton, it was negative,” Councilman Dotson said. So city leaders sought a motto “that would instill a feeling of community.”

Like Stanton, Placentia has changed with the times. In the 1920s, when the town was surrounded by acres of orange groves, city leaders adopted the rhyming motto “Placentia: Home of the Valencias.”

By the 1960s, however, the citrus trees had been replaced by housing tracts, and Placentia got a more fitting motto: “The People Are the City.”

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Some towns remain fiercely loyal to long-established mottoes, even if they no longer match the local geography.

Laguna Niguel has been known as “Sea Country” since the first housing tracts went up there 25 years ago.

When the city incorporated in 1989, residents wanted its boundaries to include coastal land south of Laguna Beach. To their dismay, the Local Agency Formation Commission decided to place the beach area within Dana Point’s city limits instead.

Though Laguna Niguel doesn’t touch the ocean, it still clings to the “Sea Country” motto.

“I always say that Lithuania never called itself Russia,” Councilman Mark Goodman said. “The fact is that much of Laguna Niguel does overlook the ocean.”

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A Few Words About Mottoes

City mottoes, which express civic pride in a catchy phrase, date back to the 1920s. They may be used to set a tone, build an identity or simply promote economic growth. Some mottoes from across the county:

* Fountain Valley: “The City Where Progress Shows”

* Garden Grove: “City of Youth and Ambition”

* Huntington Beach: “City of Expanding Horizons”

* La Palma: “City of Vision”

* San Clemente: “Spanish Village-by-the-Sea”

* Santa Ana: “Education First”

* Tustin: “City of Trees”

* Westminster: “The City of Progress Built on Pride”

* Yorba Linda: “Land of Gracious Living”

Some unofficial but familiar civic mottoes:

* Anaheim: “America’s Hub of Happiness”

* Irvine: “Just Another Day in Paradise”

Sources: “Orange County Almanac” by Jim Sleeper, Times reports; Researched by SHELBY GRAD / For The Times