License Plates

February 27, 2004 - Out of State License Plates

There are a number of ways to get to Santa Barbara. You can fly into our cute little airport (even though United has most of the flights), you can sail your boat into the harbor, bicycle along the highway, take the Greyhound Bus or the Amtrak, or you can drive. Most people drive, usually in a car, usually their own car. Like a well-trained dog, their car follows them around wherever they go. Park. Honk. Good Car!

Yesterday, the dedicated staff of edhat.com wanted to check out all of the distant ports of call from which the cars on the road in Santa Barbara hale. We looked at the license plate, a mark of distinction that remains with a car from the day it is first purchased until the day someone gets up the nerve to fight the line at the DMV to change it. Obviously most license plates in town are California (sesquicentennial – 150 years) plates, but there are enough out of state plates to get a good sample of the automobile dependent transient population.

We looked at 100 plates in all, from as close as Nevada (the silver state) to as far away as Alaska (gold rush centennial), Hawaii (aloha state), and Vermont (green mountain state). The road to Alaska is supposed to be a real doosie - a test of nerves and stamina. Of course the road to Hawaii is far more difficult.

The most popular plate we saw was Colorado, followed by a tie between Arizona (grand canyon state) and Oregon. Interestingly, Colorado is not the closest, nor the most populated. Why it was the winner could only be explained by a similarity of lifestyle. Some say Boulder, CO is the Santa Barbara of the Rockies (or is Santa Barbara the Boulder by the sea). Anyway, Boulder is a college town where the residents are fanatical about outdoor activities and dogs. Sounds familiar.

Using the power of math and spreadsheets, we produced a table to sum up all of the data we collected:

State

License
Plate
Motto

2000 Census
Pop

Found per 100

Cars
per
MM

Big
City

Miles
from
SB

Time
from
SB

Extd.
Dist.

Colorado

NA

4,301,261

14

3.3

Denver

1106

17:16

15,478

Arizona

Grand Canyon State

5,130,632

8

1.6

Phoenix

468

7:06

3,745

Oregon

NA

3,421,399

8

2.3

Portland

954

14:48

7,631

Idaho

Famous Potatoes

1,293,953

7

5.4

Boise

959

16:09

   6,710

Nevada

The Silver State

1,998,257

6

3.0

Las Vegas

359

5:26

   2,153

Texas

Lone Star

20,851,820

6

0.3

Dallas

1522

23:41

   9,134

Washington

Evergreen State

5,894,121

5

0.8

Seattle

1127

17:37

   5,633

B. Columbia

Beautiful

4,158,600

5

1.2

Vancouver

1266

19:57

   6,328

Michigan

Great Lakes

9,938,444

5

0.5

Detroit

2374

36:11

11,870

Iowa

NA

2,926,324

3

1.0

Des Moines

1773

27:13

   5,319

Georgia

www.georgia.gov

8,186,453

3

0.4

Atlanta

2268

34:51

   6,804

Florida

NA

15,982,378

3

0.2

Miami

2834

45:01

   8,501

Connecticut

Constitution State

3,405,565

3

0.9

Hartford

2995

45:16

   8,984

Utah

Greatest Snow on Earth

2,233,169

1

0.4

Salt Lake

778

11:57

   778

New Mexico

Land of Enchantment

1,819,046

1

0.5

Sante Fe

967

14:56

   967

Here you will find the population of each state and the time/distance from Santa Barbara to a big city in that state (MapQuest). We used that data to show that Idaho (famous potatoes) was the most represented state in our sample according to percent of population. You can also see that Colorado, followed by Michigan (great lakes), contributed the most total travel miles.

For our contest, 2 subscribers picked Colorado/Arizona, and 1 picked Colorado/Oregon. A random drawing between these 3 people determined Merlin as the winner. Merlin wins a choice of movie tickets, coffee card, or candy coupon. Prizes must be redeemed in California.

Check out this web site with pictures of current and historical plates from all over the world.

Want to get instant fame and cool prizes? ... enter today’s contest

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