page_title: Eureka (word)
section_title: California
hierarchical_section_title: Eureka (word) / Names and mottos / California
caption_attribution_description: English: Seal of California, a state of the United States.
context_page_description: Eureka is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention. It is a transliteration of an exclamation attributed to Ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes.
context_section_description: The expression is also the state motto of California, referring to the momentous discovery of gold near Sutter's Mill in 1848. The California State Seal has included the word eureka since its original design by Robert S. Garnett in 1850; the official text from that time describing the seal states that this word's meaning applies "either to the principle involved in the admission of the State or the success of the miner at work". In 1957 the state legislature attempted to make "In God We Trust" the state motto as part of the same post WWII anti-Communist movement that successfully added the term "under God" to the American Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, but this attempt did not succeed and "Eureka" was made the official motto in 1963.
  The city of Eureka, California, founded in 1850, uses the California State Seal as its official seal. Eureka is a considerable distance from Sutter's Mill, but was the jumping off point of a smaller gold rush in nearby Trinity County, California in 1850. It is the largest of at least eleven remaining US cities and towns named for the exclamation, "eureka!". As a result of the extensive use of the exclamation dating from 1849, there were nearly 40 locales so named by the 1880s in a nation that had none in the 1840s. Many places, works of culture, and other objects have since been named "Eureka"; see Eureka (disambiguation) for a list.
caption: The Seal of California, featuring the word "EUREKA" above the spear of the goddess Minerva, from 1870
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