FORTISVEX 33 Star U.S. Flag 3x5 Feet Nylon - Made in USA with Brass Grommets

33 Star U.S. Flag History

Oregon became the thirty-third state on February 14, 1859. Its star entered the United States flag on July 4, 1859, and the thirty-three-star count remained official through July 3, 1861. The U.S. Senate’s Oregon timeline records the admission. The National Park Service confirms the precise flag period, which extended beyond the beginning of the Civil War. State admission and the official appearance of a new star were separate dates.

Oregon’s statehood followed the resolution of a larger international boundary question. The Senate approved the Oregon Treaty with Britain in 1846, settling the principal boundary dispute at the forty-ninth parallel. Oregon Territory was formally organized in 1848, and statehood followed eleven years later. Those milestones, documented in the Senate chronology, distinguish the creation of a United States territory from its later admission as a state. The new star signified membership in the Union, not the first American claim to the region.

The state’s founding also carried a stark contradiction. Oregon’s constitution prohibited slavery while excluding Black people from residence and limiting voting to white male citizens. The Oregon Secretary of State’s historical chronology records these provisions and the 1859 admission. The thirty-third star belongs to the history of an expanding federal Union, but the political community being constructed within that Union was not open equally to all. Understanding that context avoids treating statehood as a purely celebratory or uncomplicated event.

The thirty-three-star period also includes the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. The surviving storm flag from that battle had a distinctive diamond arrangement, and the National Park Service explicitly notes that thirty-three-star flags did not all look alike. This reproduction represents the national star count and is not identified as a copy of the Sumter flag. Kansas had already entered the Union on January 29, 1861, as documented by the National Archives, but its thirty-fourth star waited until July 4. That timing explains why a thirty-three-star flag could still represent the United States during the war’s first months.

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