New Hampshire Old Man of the Mountain Plate
1999–presentNew Hampshire · current · “Live Free or Die”
The Old Man of the Mountain was a granite outcrop in Franconia Notch that looked like a face in profile. It collapsed overnight on 3 May 2003, and New Hampshire never changed the plate: the state has carried the picture of a rock that no longer exists for longer than it carried the rock. LIVE FREE OR DIE comes from a toast written in 1809 by General John Stark, who was too ill to attend the reunion he sent it to. The plate shown is a reconstruction carrying an invented serial, so no real registration is depicted.
Still on the road
This is a current issue, first seen in 1999 and still being handed out. Nothing about it is settled history: the serial sequence is still advancing, and the design will only stop where the state decides to replace it.
Half stamped, half printed
Run a thumb across this plate and only the serial answers. The registration is still pressed into the metal the old way, while the state name, the slogan and any artwork are printed flat onto the reflective sheeting around it. Most plates issued in America today are made like this: the part that must be legible at speed and survive a decade of weather is stamped, and the part that carries the state's personality is printed, because printing can do colour and detail that a press cannot.
Sources
Reference photograph of an issued plate from a collector listing (All rights reserved, cited not reproduced). Issue date and serial format, and that the design was not changed after the rock formation collapsed in 2003 (CC BY-SA).
- Issued
- Standard issue
- The plate you received by default when you registered a vehicle.
- Serial format
- 999 9999
- Material
- Aluminium: stamped serial on screened reflective sheeting
- Source license
- All rights reserved, cited not reproduced
- Reference
- View original