Pennsylvania license plates haven\u2019t changed much this millennium.<\/p>\n
While a few tweaks have been made to the standard blue, white and yellow design that has been in place since 1999, it takes a discerning eye to notice them.<\/p>\n
A totally new version, coming this spring, will be a pretty substantial overhaul. But the revamp \u2014 which features the Liberty Bell and a patriotic mix of red, white and blue to celebrate the upcoming semiquincentennial \u2014 is just one small chapter in the state\u2019s long and surprisingly interesting history of designs.<\/p>\n
In spurts, Pennsylvania\u2019s been a hub for eye-catching plates honoring everything from river otters to D.A.R.E to Quaker friendliness. Some designs, such as a tribute to Pennsylvania\u2019s state flagship, have even won awards from enthusiasts.<\/p>\n
While the new design is respectable, reviewing the past 119 years of Pennsylvania plates reveals the more whimsical side to this mandatory vehicle ornament.<\/p>\n
The early days<\/p>\n
The state started providing plates to drivers in 1906, three years after making them mandatory. Unlike the aluminum plates of today, early ones were made of porcelain and came in an array of colors.<\/p>\n
A few years into the 1920s, though, blue and yellow \u2014 the colors of our state flag \u2014 began to prevail in the designs.<\/p>\n
What started as straightforward combinations of gold and navy morphed into a series of plates with the number displayed atop a silhouette of Pennsylvania, a format that held for decades.<\/p>\n
Friendly phrases<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania started incorporating phrases into its plate designs in the 1970s, a change that\u2019s carried into the present.<\/p>\n
The first phrase-forward plate was blue, with a monotone yellow Liberty Bell separator and \u201cBicentennial State, \u201976\u201d at the bottom.<\/p>\n
License plate enthusiasts loved the new look. In 1971, the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association, a hobbyist group with members from across the country, awarded the design first place in the inaugural \u201cBest License Plate Contest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once the nation\u2019s 200th birthday passed in 1976, Pennsylvania flipped the color scheme, replaced the bell with a keystone, and changed the footer to \u201cKeystone State.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then came 1983, when Gov. Dick Thornburgh decided to mix things up. As part of a wider tourism initiative, the commonwealth announced a new standard-issue plate with the phrase, \u201cYou\u2019ve Got a Friend in Pennsylvania.\u201d<\/p>\n
The catchphrase had its haters.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo kidding, the new Pennsylvania plates really say \u2018You\u2019ve Got a Friend in Pennsylvania,\u2019 which makes me wonder who the editor-in-chief of Pennsylvania license plates is these days,\u201d Russell Baker of The New York Times quipped in a 1986 column, asserting that the \u201cclinker\u201d was \u201cdull\u201d and unspecific.<\/p>\n
Decades later, one Morning Call reader was still irked by the saying\u2019s grammar.<\/p>\n
But that just shows how deeply the slogan, which was dreamed up by an advertising firm and also used in TV and radio spots, became rooted. Thirty years after its inception, Thornburgh called the \u201cYou\u2019ve Got a Friend\u201d tourism campaign one of his administration\u2019s \u201cprime accomplishments.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt covers so much of what we market in Pennsylvania, beginning with friendliness,\u201d the former governor told the Pittsburgh Business Times in 2013. \u201cThe founder of our state, William Penn, was a Quaker or Friend. That was part of our motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The slogan didn\u2019t appear on state vehicles for very long. In 1987, under a new governor, another blue and yellow \u201cKeystone State\u201d design came along.<\/p>\n
Special plates<\/p>\n
That new model was in place until the 1990s, when Pennsylvania license plates became more than a means for identifying vehicles and promoting tourism.<\/p>\n
In 1993, Pennsylvania allowed any car owner with $35 to deviate from the norm, rolling out optional \u201cspecial fund\u201d designs that tapped into a nationwide graphic plate trend and began a long line of more bespoke and issue-oriented offerings.<\/p>\n
First came one with an image of an owl perched on a green hemlock branch. Proceeds from each plate sold went to the state\u2019s Wild Resource Conservation Fund, which lacked stable funding before then.<\/p>\n
Enticed by the new designs, Pennsylvanians began to use their plates to support zoos (the tiger plate was super popular), discourage drug use and commemorate the Erie-based Flagship Niagara. (Sadly, the Niagara plate \u2014 Pennsylvania\u2019s second \u201cBest License Plate\u201d winner \u2014 was discontinued less than two years after its release, thanks to contrast issues that hindered readability.)<\/p>\n
By 2000, PennDOT had issued around 450,000 special fund plates, according to The Associated Press. Currently, almost 138,000 active special fund plates are on the road, per PennDOT data provided to PA Local \u2014 including 26,462 with the owl that started it all, and 5,368 with the elusive battleship.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, you can still get plates that deviate from the norm, from an illustration of a butterfly pollinating a flower to an eagle with the words \u201cIn God We Trust\u201d to military plates for vets.<\/p>\n
But the eye-catching, full-plate designs of the 1990s are pretty much no more. Today\u2019s special and special fund plates use the standard-issue design as a foundation and relegate images or logos to the left of the plate number \u2014 a modification lamented by Pennsylvanians who miss the old days of plate-wide images. (The exception is the \u201cPreserve Our Heritage\u201d plate, which features a 1928 painting of a Pennsylvania Railroad train.)<\/p>\n
Digital age<\/p>\n
The last big shake-up before this year\u2019s redesign happened at the turn of the century, when the color white \u2014 and the World Wide Web \u2014 hit the road.<\/p>\n
Under Gov. Tom Ridge, the earliest version of our current design debuted in 1999, boasting a primarily white plate with blue letters, a small keystone separator, a strip of blue at the top, and a strip of yellow at the bottom.<\/p>\n
In place of a state nickname or saying, it notably included the URL for the state\u2019s former website, \u201cWWW.STATE.PA.US,\u201d making Pennsylvania the first in the union to incorporate a web address into its license plate.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis new license plate reflects Pennsylvania on the move,\u201d Ridge said at the time. \u201cIt reflects the interest in bringing technology to Pennsylvania.\u201d<\/p>\n
This layout has evolved a little over the past 26 years \u2014 the URL is now VisitPA.com, registration stickers have been retired, and the yellow and blue stripes are more opaque \u2014 but there haven\u2019t been major changes until this year.<\/p>\n
New era<\/p>\n
The state will start rolling out the new design this spring, once its supply of the current plate is exhausted.<\/p>\n
Announced last summer, the \u201cLet Freedom Ring\u201d plate, with a grayscale Liberty Bell in the background, stirred up discourse statewide. Some Pennsylvanians argued the prominence of the landmark makes it too Philadelphia-centric.<\/p>\n
The patriotic color scheme, language and imagery are meant to celebrate \u201cPennsylvania as the birthplace of American democracy and freedom,\u201d as well as highlight \u201cthe state\u2019s leading role in the 250th anniversary celebrations of our country in 2026,\u201d PennDOT spokesperson Aimee Inama told PA Local.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also supposed to \u201ccomplement\u201d Pennsylvania\u2019s revamped tourism branding.<\/p>\n
The design breaks the color yellow\u2019s century-long reign on Pennsylvania\u2019s default plates. Also gone for the first time in the internet age: a web address.<\/p>\n
\u201cPennsylvanians should not be looking at state websites while they\u2019re driving \u2014 but fortunately, the commonwealth has invested in new technology and improved digital services that make it simpler than ever before to find needed information on www.pa.gov,\u201d Inama said of the lack of a URL.<\/p>\n
The change will also prevent the state from producing license plates with website addresses that \u201ccould one day become outdated,\u201d Inama added.<\/p>\n
So far, over 100,000 have requested updates on when the new plate will be available.<\/p>\n
This story first appeared in PA Local, a weekly newsletter by Spotlight PA taking a fresh, positive look at the incredible people, beautiful places, and delicious food of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
BEFORE YOU GO \u2026 If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org\/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania license plates \u2014 some standard-issue, some optional \u2014 through the years. COLLAGE BY ASHA PRIHAR; PHOTO SOURCES: WIKIMEDIA AND COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania license plates haven\u2019t changed much this millennium. While a few tweaks have been made to the standard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-270907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}