The Rancho Murieta Logo....Does anyone know it's origin?
Does the horse and rider represent the legendary Joaquin Murieta? He was supposed to have been an accomplished rider, and as author Nadia West footnotes in her book, has always been a mix of historical fact and gold rush mythology. To some he was a Robin hood type hero to others a bandit. If your not familiar with the books written by local author Nadia West she does a great job of weaving together a history of our local history dating back to when white settlers started interacting with the local native Americans with a fictional story. River of Red gold and Eye of the bear are great reads. It gives you a great idea of what this area was like in pioneer and gold rush times. I got my books at the Plaza market. Author West used to give tours explaining the area history I heard. I would have loved to have done that. After you read the books you will recognize names of local towns and historical events as related to the history of the area.
Doug Lewis
Short question, long answer:
In 2002, Marion Cravens, Dixie Eudey, Frank Falusi and I put together a video and web history of the community for Channel 5 and RM.com. (We're the same intrepid crew producing video for RM.com today.) The web history -- from the '60s to present -- is available here.
In the course of creating that video/web history, we uncovered a few things relevant to your question.
From the web history, here's original Rancho Murieta project manager Ray Henderson speaking in 1998 about how the community's name (and logo) came about in the 1960s:
"The name itself originated with Joaquin Murietta. Tony Guzman, who has worked for us 18-19 years now, he was around here and he remembered the stories that came about having to do with Joaquin Murietta's history. It was kind of intriguing. We said, well, why not carry this one step further and develop a project out there and name it after Joaquin Murietta? That's where the name came from, and then the horse logo followed that, obviously...."
The community had been named by the 1960s, but the logo wasn't created then.
Again from the history project, the photo above is a sign for the original RM Training Center (now the Operating Engineers' Training Center, down by the Airport). This photo is from 1971, and you can see there's an attempt at a logo there, but it's a stylized tree, not a horse.
Several years later, the logo above appeared on a brochure marketing the community's first homes.
Here's how the logo made its debut on Security's uniform patches.
Over the years, designers for the community's organizations have tweaked the logo a bit, cleaning it up and making it less 1970s. Notably, in most of today's versions of the logo, the stirrup and spur have disappeared from the horse's middle. Maybe they were a bit too, uh, provocative.
The logo above is pretty universally what you see now, though there are still tweaks and even radical departures like the embossed silver logo on the CSD web site, below.
The RMA employs both the original and modernized versions. You'll find the stirrup logo on its letterhead, but not on the sign in front of the building.
Sorry you asked?
Great account, Ralph. thanks.
I seem to recall a period years ago when a variation of the logo was in use at either RMA or CSD which lacked the rifle. I vaguely recall shaking my head at apparent political correctness run amok.
Does anyone else remember that or am I having another senior moment?
Wilbur,
I seem to recal such a conversation, but not the outcome.
I was looking at the old history in the link that Ralph provided, and here's something you don't hear much about:
July 1985: Security assigns a full-time officer to horseback patrol of the community's back country.
Joined: 2008-04-09