For the second time since the 1970s, Lehi is hosting a competition to redesign its flag.
Amy Peterson grew up in Lehi. She likes the version of the flag with the green and purple mountain range because her neighbor designed it. She also “felt like it represented the views that you had when I was growing up. It's not so much like that now.”
Peterson is referring to the area's rapid growth. Growing up in the 1990s, Lehi was still mostly a farm town with around 10,000 residents. In 2022, the population was 84,373.
“Lehi is not so much about the landscape anymore,” she said. “It's more populated. There's more going on than just the landscape. So, I can see how that would need to change.”
Lehi doesn’t use the flag much anymore. These days they feature a 2015 logo that has green buildings on it instead.
“Somebody took that logo and just put it on a sheet, and that became our flag,” said Lehi Mayor Mark Johnson. “It wasn't ever really intended to be our flag.”
The new flag will follow basic flag design principles and not include text. He also hopes it will represent the changing landscape of the city.
“We don't want to forget our heritage, that's really important to us. But we also have to recognize how important the future is to us.”
Johnson likes the use of green to represent agriculture and blue to represent the future. He doesn’t know what the right symbol is yet, however.
Before opening up the competition, the city hired a graphic designer to come up with some options, but they weren’t satisfied. Johnson hopes for a flag that comes closer to living up to a lofty goal: unity.
“We're hoping that somehow we can get our citizens to understand that we are a welcoming community, and we're here to help each other and support each other. And the flag is probably just a small part of that.”
