FORTISVEX 48 Star U.S. Flag 5x8 Feet Nylon - Made in USA with Brass Grommets

48 Star U.S. Flag History

New Mexico became the forty-seventh state on January 6, 1912, and Arizona became the forty-eighth on February 14. Both entered before the next Independence Day, so their stars were added together on July 4, 1912. The official flag changed directly from forty-six to forty-eight stars. It remained at forty-eight through July 3, 1959, a span of forty-seven years. National Park Service: state admission dates; Smithsonian: flag chronology.

This flag also marks an important development in design standardization. President William Howard Taft’s 1912 executive order specified an arrangement of six horizontal rows of eight stars. The even grid distinguishes the forty-eight-star canton from the staggered rows of the later forty-nine- and fifty-star designs. The product gallery shows that six-by-eight arrangement with thirteen alternating red and white stripes. Equal row lengths create aligned vertical columns, rather than alternating longer and shorter rows. The historical order explains the pattern without implying that this reproduction has the proportions, fabric, or manufacturing details of a particular government-issued flag. National Park Service: the forty-eight-star design.

The design’s long official life gave it associations with more than one generation and more than one conflict. It was the national flag during World War II and the Korean War, and a forty-eight-star flag appears in the famous 1945 flag raising on Iwo Jima. Eight presidents served during its official period, from Taft to Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was also the flag of the Truman presidency when Congress established the permanent annual observance of Flag Day in 1949. These associations describe the national design, not a claim that the product copies a specific battlefield flag. National Park Service: Truman, war, and Flag Day; U.S. Department of State: the flag at Iwo Jima.

Alaska’s admission in January 1959 brought this long interval to a close, but the forty-eight-star design remained official until July. A new forty-nine-star flag was formally raised at Fort McHenry on July 4, 1959. The succession provides a clear boundary between this familiar twentieth-century flag and the brief forty-nine-star design that followed. Eisenhower Presidential Library: the 1959 transition.

Explore the States Represented in This Flag

• New Mexico history · Shop New Mexico flags
• Arizona history · Shop Arizona flags