Oregon's license plate design
The Corvallis Gazette-Times editorial on state's choice of license plates from Feb. 21:
Last year the Legislature ordered up 40,000 sets of "Pacific Wonderland" license plates, and now, on March 1, the commemorative plates will go on sale. These were good-looking plates when they were first issued in 1959, and Oregon should go back to them for good.
The legislature has authorized several kinds of special plates over the years, usually to raise money for or to honor special causes or groups such as veterans.
But the general public for the most part still uses those sad-looking plates that came out about 20 years ago. They are not distinctive. Their white background gets dirty quickly. The green thing in the middle is hard to recognize as a Douglas fir. (The original design had a golden tree, but the state decided that this looked too much like a dead tree, so they changed it to green instead — over the objection of the designer, if memory serves.)
From the standpoint of color and simplicity of design, Oregon had much better plates before. But one of the best was the Pacific Wonderland design, issued on the occasion of Oregon's 100th birthday.
There are only two problems with the new commemorative version:
It costs $100 extra, though this is understandable because it's supposed to be a fundraiser for the Capitol Foundation and the Oregon Historical Society.
Only 40,000 sets are being offered.
(Another problem, although it's not a big one, is that the plate is available only for passenger vehicles, not for trailers and the like.)
The high price may dampen the demand for the new plates. But it is likely that for many people in a certain age group, nostalgia will overcome parsimony in this case, and they'll pay the price. These would be the people who got their first cars in the period between 1959 and 1964 and remember fondly those days which may not have been carefree and easy but had the singular advantage that the people who are remembering them were young. Being young and having a car as the Fifties ended and the Sixties got under way would have been a particularly happy combination.
In 2011, the Legislature could do all of us a big favor: It could make the Pacific Wonderland design permanent and enact it as a generic license plate for all Oregon vehicles from then on.
It would not have to insist on the two-word legend, which may strike many vehicle owners today as a little on the hokey side, but even without it, that letter, number and color combinations has a pleasing look.
People with special plates — for salmon, Crater Lake and such — could still use those. But the general public would have a nice-looking plate without having to pay the extra fee.
