Today’s classic column is a question about the six flags flown over Texas. Cecil finished up by addressing the question of “six flags” flown over St. Louis, and thought that including the Spanish one was a bit of a stretch.
Nope! St. Louis was part of the Louisiana Territory, which
did belong to Spain for several years. We had a Spanish
governor here, and a local road, Kingshighway, was originally part of a Camino Real throughout the Territory.
Spain counts!
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Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site.
To include a link, it can be as simple as including the web page location in your post (make sure there is a space before and after the text of the URL).
Cecil’s column can be found on-line at this link:
What are the six flags that have flown over Texas? (18-Oct-1996)
The column (including Slug Signorino’s illustration) can also be found on pages 235-236 of Cecil Adams’ book “Triumph of the Straight Dope”.
(edited to add mention of book)
(this message has been edited by Arnold Winkelried)
They have 28 theme parks altogether in the U.S. These are the ones that have the words “Six Flags” in the name:
Six Flags America
Largo, MD 20775
Six Flags Astroworld & Waterworld
Houston, TX 77054
Six Flags Darien Lake
Darien Center, NY 14040
Six Flags Elitch Gardens
Denver, CO 80204
Six Flags Fiesta Texas
San Antonio, TX 78257
Six Flags Great Adventure,
Hurricane Harbor & Wild Safari
Jackson, NJ 08527
Six Flags Great America
Gurnee, IL 60031
Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom
Louisville, KY 40209
Six Flags Marine World
Vallejo, CA 94589
Six Flags Magic Mountain & Hurricane Harbor
Valencia, CA 93155
Six Flags New England
Agawam, MA 01001
Six Flags Ohio
Aurora, OH 44202
Six Flags Over Georgia
Austell, GA 30168
Six Flags Over Texas
Arlington, TX 76010
Six Flags St. Louis
Eureka, MO 63025
Cecil, don’t be so persnickety about Six Flags over St. Louis including Illinois–maybe they’re considering that the Mississippi River meanders back and forth, and what is now Missouri might have been Illinois 10,000 years ago. They certainly seem very elastic when it comes to other geographic areas. Six Flags over Darien, New York? Six Flags over Ohio? I didn’t know the Miami Indians ever had a flag. Six Flags over Kentucky? Six Flags over New Jersey? Six Flags over Denver?
It all sounds like kind of a stretch to me.
P.S. Arnold, see what you miss? I bet Ed could pull some strings and get you a green card, if you wanted. 
Duck Duck Goose, I actually don’t need a green card, I am a proud USA citizen! Born in Whittier, California as a matter of fact. All that posturing about switzerland is not bogus though, I also have swiss citizenship and I grew up in Switzerland.
I am looking for a third citizenship though (I am planning on starting to collect them), so if you know of any country with lenient criteria for admitting new immigrants please let me know.
I imagine they included Illinois (and Great Britain) in Six Flag over Mid-America because they meant to include the entire St. Louis metro area. But the real problem is that they included state flags, not just national flags. In Texas they are all national flags.
The thing I’ve always wondered about is what are the six flags over Georgia? I assume one is the Spanish flag. I don’t know of any Spanish settlement in what is now Georgia, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was one. British, US, Confederate are three more and they probably threw in the Georgia state flag. So what’s the sixth? Did the Cherokees have a flag?
No, not the Cherokee. I think the sixth flag is the French. You’re right about Spain; remember that Florida, just to the south of what is now Georgia, was a Spanish colony for a long time, and a small Spanish fort was built on the Atlantic coast just north of the present Georgia/Florida border.
As (presumably) the only native Georgian on SDMB, I’ll take the ball on this question and find out for sure what the sixth flag was.
Six flags Ohio? Did they buy out the Geauga Lake amusement park? I’d never heard about that.
It’s not particularly lenient, A.W., but I for one would be impressed if you could score a Sealand citizenship . . .
[hijack]
Arnold’s looking for another country to add to his collection? Tonga looks good. It’s a constitutional monarchy. The Tongan squash industry is facing stiff competition from the Mexicans, but on the upside, the Japanese have donated a number of terminal boxes in order to improve the telephone service. You have to pay a fee to become a citizen, but notice that Fiji will honor your Tongan passport, so it’s like getting two countries for the price of one.
Clive Edwards is the Minister of Police and Immigration.
Learn more about Tonga here.
I love the Internet.
[/hijack]
The Six Flags folks are happy to be competing nationally against Disney as a well known brand name theme park (the one that’s closer to home!). As such, they feel it is important to keep their brand label consistent and identifiable. So after starting with Six Flags Over Texas (an accurate name) (I think Texas was first), then they built or bought theme parks in numerous locations around the country, retaining the “Six Flags” name for brand identification. However, many of the other parks have a questionable history for having the Six Flags label be applied. Maybe they used to try to cobble up some actual sum of flags to six so they could pretend the label actually meant something, but now they don’t bother. They just like calling it “Six Flags” the same way their competition is “Disney”. Thus, I believe, the distinction between “Six Flags Over Texas” and “Six Flags Darien Lake”.
While they changed the name of Six Flags over Mid-America to Six Flags St. Louis, it’s still Six Flags Over Georgia. They surely have six flags in mind for that.
It could be the French. I know the French had a short-lived colony in the Chesapeake Bay area (until the Spanish kicked them out; this was well before Virginia) but that wouldn’t count for Georgia. There could have been another French outpost, perhaps people from New Orleans, set up somewhere in present day Georgia.
Six Flags Over Texas was indeed the original park (opened by Angus Wynne, a Dallas-Fort Worth developer, in 1961 I believe). Later, Six Flags Over Georgia was opened, followed by Six Flags Over Mid-America. Ownership of the parks traded hands several times during the 70s and 80s, and other parks were added and incorporated the Six Flags brand name (Great America in Gurnee, IL; Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ; AstroWorld in Houston, Magic Mountain in Valencia, CA). A few years ago, Premier Parks bought the Six Flags parks from Time Warner, and began adding the Six Flags brand name to some of its existing parks (Elitch Gardens in Denver; Kentucky Kingdom in Louisville; Geauga Lake in Aurora, OH, etc).
Irishman got it right. With the three original parks (Texas, Georgia, Mid-America), I think they did try to have a “six flags” historical connection to the area. When I visited the Georgia park, I think it had the British, US, Confederate, maybe Spanish and French flags. The only flag I remember questioning was the “Cotton States” flag, or somesuch. I don’t know what the Cotton States represented. Maybe one of our Georgia Dopers could elaborate for us.
I did a little digging and I found this 1996 map of the Georgia Park:
http://www.coasterphotos.com/Maps/images/sfog1996.jpg
Having grown up with Six Flags Over Texas, I know that the various park areas represented each of the six countries that flew flags over Texas. Assuming that this holds true for the Georgia park, then according to this map, the political entities that flew flags over Georgia included:
England
USA
CSA
Georgia
France
Spain
Cotton States and Lickskillet are probably areas that were added as the park expanded and don’t necessarily represent a particular flag. At the Texas park, we had two similar areas called Boomtown and Good Times Square that didn’t correspond to any of the flags (but they were both located adjacent to the USA area).
Was that originally a Six Flags theme park? I recall the full name being “Marine World, Africa, USA”, or something like that, not “Six Flags Marine World”.
I’m not sure what the big mystery about what the six flags are, anyway. The six flags are: orange, green, cyan, yellow, blue, and purple. 
According to this link:
http://www.lonestar.texas.net/~themeprk/sfot/history/corptimeline.htm
it appears that Marine World joined the Six Flags family when Premier Parks purchased the company in 1998.