Flag Day is embraced each year in a handful of proudly red, white and blue all-American communities with the patriotic pomp normally reserved for July 4th, Independence Day.

These cities and towns even vie for Flag Day bragging rights — often with conflicting claims — over who is offering America's first, biggest or best Flag Day parades and celebrations.

The collection of fervent Flag Day communities stretches from sea to shining sea. It includes heartland towns such as Appleton, Wisc. and Three Oaks, Mich., as well as Fairfield, Wash., on the Palouse of the Pacific Northwest, and historic Quincy, Mass., which overlooks Boston Harbor on the Atlantic Ocean.

Flag Day is celebrated each June 14 to honor the 1777 date when the Second Continental Congress adopted America's familiar stars and stripes as the national flag. 

"Resolved," Congress declared, "that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."

Many Americans know that design today as the "Betsy Ross flag."