The Ohio flag: the only state burgee, and its seventeen folds
Ohio is the only state whose flag is not a rectangle, and Ohio law prescribes how to fold it — in seventeen folds, for the seventeenth state.
Every other state flag in the United States is a rectangle. Ohio’s is not. Section 5.01 of the Ohio Revised Code begins: “The flag of the state shall be burgee-shaped.” A burgee is a swallow-tailed pennant, the shape normally flown by yacht clubs, and Ohio is the only state to use one.
The statute also explains what the design means, which most flags do not. It gives the flag “three red and two white horizontal stripes that represent the roads and waterways of the state”. The blue triangle at the staff represents the state’s hills and valleys, with its base along the staff edge and its apex at the centre of the middle red stripe.
The stars are counted deliberately. The union is seventeen five-pointed white stars in the blue field. Thirteen stand for the original thirteen states; the remaining four, grouped at the peak of the triangle, mark Ohio as the seventeenth state admitted to the Union. Within the stars sits a red disc on a white circular “O” — read both as the state’s initial and as a nod to the Buckeye State nickname. The statute does not fix the flag’s measurements in words: the proportions “shall be according to the official design on file in the office of the secretary of state”.
Ohio law goes further than the design. Section 5.014 establishes “a recommended procedure for the folding of the state flag by two people”, and the procedure is built around the same number: three folds to form a long strip and rectangle, then fourteen alternating fan folds. The statute states the result is “a total of seventeen folds symbolizing that Ohio was the seventeenth state admitted to the union”.
There is also an official pledge. Section 5.013 gives it as: “I salute the flag of the state of Ohio and pledge to the buckeye state respect and loyalty.” The section notes it is not intended to replace or precede the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States.
Read the flag statute: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-5.01
Read the folding procedure: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-5.014