FORTISVEX 38 Star U.S. Flag 3x5 Feet Nylon - Made in USA with Brass Grommets

38 Star U.S. Flag History

Colorado became the thirty-eighth state on August 1, 1876, during the hundredth-anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence. That timing gave Colorado its enduring designation as the Centennial State. Its entry did not immediately change the official national flag: the thirty-eighth star took effect on July 4, 1877. The thirty-eight-star flag remained the official design through July 3, 1890. Library of Congress: Colorado’s admission; Smithsonian: flag chronology.

Statehood followed a constitutional process, not simply the selection of a new symbol. Colorado’s General Assembly records that the state constitution was drafted in March 1876, approved by voters on July 1, and took effect when the state entered the Union the next month. President Ulysses S. Grant’s admission proclamation recognized that the required steps had been completed. The thirty-eighth star can therefore be understood as the visible national result of a process involving a constitution, a vote, and federal recognition. Colorado General Assembly: the state constitution; President Grant’s admission proclamation.

The gap between August 1876 statehood and the July 1877 flag change is especially useful when interpreting centennial-era objects. A date associated with Colorado’s admission is not automatically the start of its official flag period. Nor does the star count identify the precise year an individual historic flag was made. The national sequence records authorized designs; establishing the age or origin of a surviving object requires its own evidence. This reproduction represents the thirty-eight-star stage without claiming the provenance of a particular period flag.

The gallery shows thirty-eight white stars in five rows of eight, seven, eight, seven, and eight, accompanied by thirteen stripes. The next official change was unusually large: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Idaho all joined before July 4, 1890, so the count advanced directly from thirty-eight to forty-three. The Library of Congress documents the four November 1889 admissions and Idaho’s arrival on July 3, 1890. That sequence explains both this flag’s long official span and its abrupt replacement by a design with five additional stars. Library of Congress: northern western statehood.

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