Flag of Texas

How to read it

Chapter 3100 of the Texas Government Code makes the state flag “the 1839 national flag of the Republic of Texas” and describes it in section 3100.002. It is a rectangle with a width to length ratio of two to three. The blue vertical stripe is one third of the length of the flag; the two horizontal stripes, white above red, are equal and each two thirds of the length. The white star sits in the centre of the blue stripe with one point up, sized so that a circle through its five points is three quarters the width of the blue stripe. The red and blue are the colours of the United States flag, defined as Pantone 193 (red) and 281 (dark blue). The chapter was added in 2001 (Acts 2001, chapter 1420, the bill HB 2812, a nonsubstantive revision), restating the description the legislature wrote in 1993.

Also searched as: flag of texas, lone star flag, texas flag, texas flag meaning, texas state flag.

Texas flag vs Chile flag

Both have a white star on blue at the pole and white over red stripes, and both are 2:3. On Chile’s flag the blue is only a square in the upper corner, so the red stripe runs the full length of the flag under it; Chile’s flag decree describes it that way. On the Texas flag the blue stripe runs the full height and both stripes stop at it. Chile’s flag dates from a decree of 18 October 1817, Texas’s from 1839. Óscar Barrientos, writing in CIPER Chile in 2022, noted that people point out the resemblance but that no clear link between the two has been found.

Telling it from Puerto Rico and North Carolina

Puerto Rico’s flag also has one white star at the pole, but on a blue triangle, beside five red and white stripes. North Carolina’s flag has the same layout as Texas’s with the bars the other way round, red over white, and adds a gilt N and C and two dates.

Who designed it

Nobody knows. The Handbook of Texas says Senator William H. Wharton put the design in a bill on 28 December 1838; the Congress of the Republic passed it on 21 January 1839, and President Mirabeau B. Lamar approved it on 25 January. Peter Krag drew the official art. The designer could have been Wharton. In 1989 the legislature named Dr. Charles B. Stewart as the designer; in 1992 it corrected itself, saying the designer is unknown, and recognised Senators Wharton and Oliver Jones for getting the flag adopted.

The years without a flag law

The Revised Civil Statutes of 1879 left out the 1839 flag law, which repealed it, so Texas had no legal flag from 1 September 1879 until the flag act of 1933 took effect on 31 August 1933, the Handbook says. The 1933 law called the colours blood red and azure blue but named no standard for them, and few flags were made at the official 2:3. The 1993 law tied the red and blue to the US flag’s Old Glory Red and Old Glory Blue.

The points of the star

The law gives the star no meaning. In an article in Frontier Times in September 1948, Adina de Zavala suggested that its five points stand for the qualities of a good citizen: fortitude, loyalty, righteousness, prudence and broadmindedness. The Texas State Library quotes her suggestion as hers.