Texas flies its flag with an enthusiasm no other state matches. The design is simple enough to draw from memory: a blue vertical stripe at the hoist carrying one white star, then a white horizontal stripe over a red one. It has been in continuous use since January 25, 1839, when Texas was not a state but an independent republic, which makes it one of the oldest state flags in the country and the only one that spent six years as the national flag of a sovereign nation. The star came first, the flag second, and the nickname followed both.
A republic chooses its banner
Texas declared independence from Mexico in March 1836 and spent its first years as a republic under the Burnet Flag, a single gold star on an azure field named for interim president David G. Burnet. It did the job, but not everyone loved it. On December 28, 1838, Senator William H. Wharton introduced a bill for a new national flag, and the Third Congress of the Republic passed it. President Mirabeau B. Lamar signed the act on January 25, 1839.
The act described the flag in the form still used today: a blue perpendicular stripe of one third the length of the flag with a white star of five points in its center, and horizontal stripes of white above red filling the rest. The official drawing that accompanied the act was made by Peter Krag. When Texas gave up its independence to join the United States in December 1845, the national flag of the republic carried straight over as the flag of the state. No redesign was ever seriously entertained.
The designer nobody can name
For a flag this famous, the record of who designed it is remarkably thin. The 1839 act names no designer, and the journals of the Third Congress do not either. Tradition long credited Charles B. Stewart of Montgomery, a physician and public official whose surviving drawing of the flag was said to be the original. In 1989 the Texas Legislature made it official, recognizing Stewart as the designer.
The recognition did not survive scrutiny. Historians pointed out that Stewart's drawing appears to be a copy made after the fact, not the source of the design, and that no contemporary document ties him to it. In 1992 the legislature corrected itself, acknowledging that the designer of the Lone Star Flag is unknown and crediting Wharton and his colleagues only with the flag's adoption. The town of Montgomery still calls itself the birthplace of the Texas flag, and the debate resurfaces periodically in Texas newspapers. The honest answer is that the flag was probably shaped by committee, and the records that would settle the question were never kept or never survived.
Fifty-four years without a legal flag
Texas managed to misplace its own flag law. When the state consolidated its statutes in the Revised Civil Statutes of 1879, the old flag act was repealed and nothing was put in its place. From 1879 until 1933, Texas had no legally defined state flag at all. People kept flying the Lone Star Flag anyway, since nobody reads statute books before raising a flag.
The legislature fixed the oversight on August 31, 1933, with a flag code that readopted the 1839 design and added rules for display, along with a state pledge: "Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible." The phrase "one state under God" was inserted in 2007. In 2001 the legislature tightened the specification further, fixing the proportions at 2:3 and matching the colors to those of the United States flag, defined as Pantone 193 red and Pantone 281 blue. The same statute assigns the colors their meanings: blue for loyalty, white for purity, red for bravery.
Six flags over Texas
The state's history is often told through the six nations whose flags have flown over its territory. France planted a short-lived colony under La Salle from 1685 to 1689. Spain held the land for well over a century, Mexico from 1821 to 1836, then the Republic of Texas until annexation in 1845. The United States has flown its flag since, interrupted by the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865.
The phrase "six flags over Texas" became a fixture of schoolbooks and, in 1961, the name of an amusement park in Arlington that grew into a national chain. The Lone Star Flag is the only one of the six that never left. Having served as the flag of an independent nation, it carries a status Texans bring up often, sometimes accurately.
The equal-height legend
The best-known claim about the Texas flag is false. The story goes that because Texas was once an independent country, it is the only state permitted to fly its flag at the same height as the United States flag. No such rule exists. The United States Flag Code allows every state flag to fly at equal height on a separate pole, provided the US flag occupies the position of honor. Texas law itself instructs that the state flag should be flown below the US flag when on the same pole, same as anywhere else.
The legend persists because it flatters a self-image the flag already feeds. A 2:3 rectangle in the same red, white, and blue as the national flag, one star instead of fifty: the design reads as a statement of parity whether or not the law backs it up. Texans put it on license plates, boots, murals, and the roofs of barns. The North American Vexillological Association's 2001 survey of state and provincial flags ranked it second of 72, behind only New Mexico, and it is one of the few state flags most Americans can identify on sight.
References
[1] "Flags of Texas," Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/flags-of-texas
[2] "Flag of Texas," Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Texas
[3] "Why nobody knows who designed the Texas flag," KUT Radio, Austin (2016). https://www.kut.org/austin/2016-06-15/why-nobody-knows-who-designed-the-texas-flag
[4] Texas Government Code, Chapter 3100: State Flag (flag description, colors, and pledge).
[5] North American Vexillological Association, "2001 State and Provincial Flags Survey." https://nava.org