By Noah Dawson
A few months ago, I realized something about the 2013 City of Amarillo logo fiasco.
For those who don't remember, in 2013, the City had created a logo which was quickly found to be identical to the logo of a Dubai real estate company, Emaar Properties. The logo in question featured a negative space white sun with long pointed rays on a golden background, setting (or rising) over blue hills. The main controversy, of course, was the fact that it was the same as an already existing logo. The City quickly replaced the logo with the one we have today, and most people forgot about it. Still, had the design been original, there was another problem with it which seems to serve as a metaphor for many of the City’s problems today. The problem is that, while it correctly contains a reference to our iconic sunsets and sunrises, the landscape couldn’t be much more wrong. I can’t speak for everybody in Amarillo, but I don’t ever remember our city being known for blue hills. In fact, it’s quite the opposite; we are famous for our golden plains.
We are an iconic city in an iconic area. From our vast golden plains to the breathtaking views of Palo Duro Canyon to the south and the Canadian River Valley to the north, our geography is iconic. This area’s history is one of cowboys, oil, and the last stand of the Comanches against a federal government determined to finish conquering the continent. In fact, combine our history of the rugged individualism of the old west and Quanah Parker fighting to keep the federal government from conquering this land, and you might find why our culture has a particularly strong aversion to government meddling. Our economy is still one of the strongest agricultural centers in the world. This is the land that feeds our nation. We have one of the central vestiges of our nation with Interstate 40, and have a large underused airport, making our area ripe for use as a transportation hub, once somebody figures that out.
I’ve been attending weekly city council meetings for the past few months. If there were anybody who’s only experience with Amarillo was city council meetings, they could be forgiven for thinking that Amarillo was just an average city. They might even be fooled into thinking the most iconic part of our city is our downtown. They might think that our culture is one filled with baseball fans, and if the spending done by the council were any clue, they might mistake the city for being in a blue state. They’d wonder why the Texas flag feels so out of place there, and why we have such an out of place seal on the wall behind the council. They’d probably be shocked to find out that this city sits in the middle of the most conservative part of the entire nation.
We could embrace our geography, history, culture, and economy. We could look at Fort Worth, and see how they have embraced their part of cowboy culture as an unmistakable part of the identity of the city. We could look to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and see how they have embraced the native part of their history as an unmistakable part of the identity of their cities. Most importantly, we should look at Amarillo and figure out how to make what makes Amarillo iconic an unmistakable part of our identity. Instead, we’re getting a baseball stadium.
We have a different city council today than the one we had during the logo fiasco, but the values haven’t changed. We are Amarillo. We aren’t Dallas, we aren’t Houston, and we aren’t New York City. We aren’t a city of blue hills. We need to make Amarillo again.
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