NEBRASKA

Nebraska's first motor vehicle registration law was 1905 Chapter 129, passed April 3, 1905, effective July 1, 1905.  The law required automobile and motorcycle owners to register with the Secretary of State, pay a one-time $1 fee and display a state-issued disc and an owner-provided rear plate with 3-inch-tall numbers and 2-inch-tall "NA" state abbreviation.  Non-residents were exempted.  Local registration by cities and towns was expressly prohibited.  The Lincoln Evening News reported on July 25, 1905, that under a ruling of the Attorney General, every dealer would be required to provide plates for all machines carried in their stock.

Registration began on June 14, 1905, but a Lincoln Evening News article on June 29, 1905, mentioned the delayed arrival of the first order of 500 discs.  Another article on August 26, 1905, stated that 495 licenses had been issued to date; based on that and the total of 571 reported for 1905, a second order for discs would undoubtedly have been needed before the end of the first year, despite the state's expectation that the original 500 would last a long time due to registration being permanent.  Numbers estimated to have been issued by calendar year are given in the table below.

The 1905 law was repealed by a new law, 1907 Chapter 115, passed exactly two years later on April 3, 1907.  However, the new law only made minor changes to the language of the original one.  The two most substantive changes affecting registration were as follows:  The $1 fee was now annual with each registration to expire one year from the date of issue.  The state abbreviation on the owner-provided rear plate was now to be "NEB", not "NA", which proved to be quite unpopular in 1905-06.  While Nebraska pre-states are among the most common in the United States, early examples with the "NA" letters are very scarce.  #2049, 2557 and 3217 are known with "NA", which is puzzling since they are early 1908 numbers; only numbers below about #1500 should have had that abbreviation.  Apparently not all motorists got the word too quickly!

The next law, which again fully repealed the 1907 version but made only limited changes to the basic function of the original 1905 and 1907 statutes, was 1911 Chapter 115 (the same number as the 1907 law!), passed April 11, 1911.  The annual fee for automobiles was raised to $2 but motorcycles remained at $1, the new fees to take effect upon expiration of the old registration.  The fees were now to be paid to the County Treasurer*, while the receipt for payment and vehicle application form were still submitted to the Secretary of State.  The state no longer issued or required a disc.  The highest known disc is #16581, which is probably a 1911 issue.  Changes to the owner-provided plates were numerous:  Pairs were required, numbers were increased from 3 to 4 inches tall, the "NEB" abbreviation was increased from 2 to 3 inches tall and was to be placed at the right side (whereas previously it could be in any location) and the color scheme was to be white on black.  Non-residents were allowed 30 days, but beyond that had to register their vehicles.  Dealers were allowed as many plates of the same regular number as needed.  Pre-states were still valid on Nebraska motor vehicles as late as April 1916, which is explained in the paragraph on state-issued plates, and may have continued up to July of 1917 for Dealers, also noted below.  The highest Nebraska pre-state plate known is #65435.

*There were only 92 counties in Nebraska in 1911.  Arthur County was formed on June 7, 1913, from the western part of McPherson County, arriving at today's total of 93 counties.

Numbers (and totals) ESTIMATED to have been issued by calendar year:

1905       1 -   571      (571)

1906     572 -  1087      (516)

1907    1088 -  2144    (1,057)

1908    2145 -  4292    (2,148)

1909    4293 -  8588    (4,296)

1910    8589 - 14700    (6,112)

1911   14701 - 22700    (8,000)

1912   22701 - 34000   (11,300)

1913   34001 - 47000   (13,000)

1914   47001 - 63800   (16,800)

1915   63801 - 65500    (1,700)

The above numbers for 1905-06 were inferred from the totals reported for each year listed in the Secretary of State's biennial reports and the numbers up to April 25, 1908, are reliable.  The figures for 1909-15 are estimates based on the wide variety of newspaper reports below.

Many bits and pieces of evidence gleaned from various articles in the Lincoln Daily News and other period newspapers give us some insight into the increase in numbers issued. These are listed by year below, along with monthly totals if known:

1905 - Jun. 14, 1905                1

       Oct. 12, 1905              547

1906 - Apr. 25, 1906              659

       May   7, 1906              688

       Jul. 25, 1906              857

1907 - Apr. 25, 1907             1299

       October  1907                       (88)

       November 1907                       (72)

       December 1907                       (32)

1908 - January  1908                       (59)

       February 1908                       (39)

       March    1908                      (141)

       Apr.  7, 1908             2406

       Apr.  1 - 25, 1908        2614     (231)

       Jul. 31, 1908             3402

       December 1908                      (120)

1909 - Jan.  1 - 14, 1909                  (70)

       December 1909                       (44)

1910 - Jan.  1 - 14, 1910                  (14)

       Jan.  1 - Jun. 1, 1910           (2,300)

       Jan.  1 - Jul. 1, 1910   12080   (3,492)

1911 - April    1911                    (1,002)

1912 - Apr.  1, 1912            23904

       May      1912                    (1,927)

       May  24, 1912            26374

       Aug.  1, 1912            30135

       Dec. 16, 1912            33804

1913 - Apr.  1, 1913            35877

       April    1913                    (1,337)

       May      1913                    (1,753)

       Aug. 29, 1913            44713

       Nov.  1, 1913            46634

1914 - February 1914                      (402)

       Mar. 12, 1914            48750

       March    1914                      (788)

       Apr. 15, 1914            50000

       April    1914                    (1,533)

       May      1914                    (2,388 or 2,114)

       June 5,  1914            53779

       June     1914                    (2,127)

1915 - January  1915                      (351)

       February 1915                      (174)

       Apr.  5, 1915 Last day

Because of the perpetual issuance of numbers over such a long period, it will take further research to accurately determine the numbers issued by year if such records can be found.

The decade-long pre-state era in Nebraska ended with the passage of 1915 Chapter 61 on April 6, 1915, effective immediately.  This law required annual registration and a yearly state-issued rear plate.  Fees were $3 for passenger, $2 for motorcycles and $5 for commercial vehicles and dealers, and were to be paid to the County Treasurer in the same manner as in 1911.  The registration year was January 1 to December 31 and half-rates were in effect after July 1.  The same pre-state number would be issued upon renewal if applied for within 30 days after expiration of the old registration.  An unusual aspect of the law is that old registrations continued to be valid until their expiration, which could have been as late as April 1916.  Therefore, some pre-state registrants skipped the 1915 issue altogether.  One example of this was seen in the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal) of February 26, 1939, which published a photo of a complete run of Nebraska plates all issued to the owner's same 1914 Ford.  There was no 1915 plate; the leather plate #64439 was followed by the 1916 plate #22351.

Only passenger and motorcycle plates were issued (Dealer plates began in 1917, noted in a separate paragraph below, and truck plates started in 1919).  Like 1911, dealers were allowed as many plates of the same number as they needed, but it is not known if the additional plates were state-issued or owner-provided.  No "pairs" or multiples of 1915 plates have been found, so based on this evidence, and the way the new 1917 Dealer law was worded, it is believed that all additional plates of the same number were self-provided by the dealers.  In this sense, the pre-state era in Nebraska probably continued until July 1917 when including Dealer duplicates.

According to the Lincoln Star on April 21, 1915, "S. R. McKelvie of Lincoln received the first metal number plate issued by the secretary of state under the new automobile registration law.  The second one went to Earl Eager of this city.  The numbers were, respectively, 66,356 and 66,357.  The new plates are painted white, with black letters and figures."

Two different companies apparently manufactured the 1915 plates, resulting in two die and size varieties.  A theory that one style was for renewal numbers while the other was for newly-issued "dead" numbers has been disproved by the fact that 1915 plates #2049 and #63685 are different styles, yet both were found accompanied by their matching leather pre-state plates.  The highest 1915 passenger plate known is #69873.  This is more than 4,000 numbers higher than the last known pre-state number because the state had to avoid overlapping numbers that were still valid up to the 65000s, and renewals could retain their old number up to 30 days after expiration.  Therefore, both renewal and "dead" numbers issued in December 1915 could not exceed numbers that expired after October 31, 1915, which had been issued in October 1914.  If the figures in the registration table above are accurate, that would exclude all numbers beyond about #40000.

A 1917 newspaper article noted that the state still had several thousand leftover plates, mostly from 1915, because the secretary had not gone over the list of active numbers before ordering the 1915 plates and was probably unable to estimate the number of motor vehicles in use even if he had.

1915 motorcycle plates were issued sequentially with new numbers assigned to everyone, rather than keeping the old plate number like passenger plates.  The first order of plates contained numbers from 1 to 700. The highest 1915 motorcycle plate known is #1417, twice as high as the original order.

A Lincoln Daily Star article on May 6, 1917, announced a new law providing specifically for Dealer plates, effective in July 1917.  The article clearly stated that all additional plates (of the same number) must be secured from the state at 35 cents each.  This implies that, previously, extra Dealer plates for vehicles being demonstrated were not supplied by the state, and were probably provided by each individual dealer, in the same manner that owners provided their own plates during the pre-state era.

Additional dealer plates made up by the dealer to match the master number of his state-issued plate from mid-1915 to mid-1917 could account for some of the pre-state plates currently in existence and believed to be from before the 1915 state issue.  None, however, have a number over #70000, which would prove the point by being higher than any 1915 plate.

It is very likely that Motorcycle Dealer plates also began in mid-1917, as a 1919 news article mentioned this type of plate being issued.