Blackout Bonanza: What Your Colorado Specialty License Plate Says About You

Specialty license plates have become a driving force — for Colorado state coffers, at least. Not everyone wants the same green-on-white with random alphanumerics; for less than a hundo, you can show your support for a cause you believe in...and also say a little something about the kind of Coloradan you are. Maybe.

The biggest seller in 2023: the Blackout plate based on Colorado’s 1945 variant, which was just reintroduced and purchased 169,998 times in 2023. At an annual fee of $25 per plate (in addition to standard charges), that added more than $4.2 million to the Colorado Disability Funding Committee for the calendar year.

The Blackout plate comes from the four-choice "Historic" lineup of resurrected plates. Last year, the state also offered four new "Specialty" designs — none of which will unseat the champ (Columbine, with 75,000 sold last year), but some that might give others on the list (Ski Country USA at #4, Broncos Charities at #8 and Rocky Mountain National Park at #10) a good run for their money. The four new options: Born to Be Wild, In God We Trust, Stegosaurus State Fossil and Navy Seabees. (A complete list of Historic and Specialty plates is available on the CDOT website.)

“Our choice in license plates reflects things we love to do, organizations we support, our service, our hobbies and interests, and provides financial support to these organizations,” says DMV Senior Director Electra Bustle in announcing the numbers from last year. “What a great way to demonstrate our spirit and uniqueness as individuals.”

Well, our uniqueness in a group, anyway. Although we're not about to guess what the Blackout plate demonstrates about our spirit, some of Colorado's "Specialty" plates deliver their message loud and clear:

Aviation
It's a sky-blue plate with different forms of aircraft flying over a stylized runway and an iconic Colorado sunset. Sort of a weird choice for a land-bound license plate, right? Just put an "I'd rather be flying" sticker on your bumper and be done with it, Red Baron.
Fee: $50 and a strong argument as to whether Maverick or Goose was the better pilot.
Born to Be Wild
This will appeal to Easy Rider fans, biker gangs and roving bands of dentists who are desperately trying to look like a biker gang — though it was actually supposed to salute the reintroduction of wolves, one of which is pictured on the black-on-white license plate. But it's probably going to be used more for that guy who thinks it's super-cool to wear a T-shirt with a howling wolf picture.
Fee: $25 and proof of an enhanced exhaust system to increase decibel output.
Colorado Rockies
A white-capped mountainscape with purple skies makes this plate a great choice for Rockies faithful — as long as you don't mind waiting for next year, every year. The slogan is "Baseball With an Altitude," but it would be more accurate to say "Rebuilding Since 1993" or "Let's Just Keep Talking about 2007." 
Fee: $50 and all the hope you can muster.
In God We Trust
The Colorado connection is pretty subtle, but that's because statehood is clearly secondary for those purchasing this new specialty plate, with red, white and blue stars and stripes dwarfing the barely visible white and gray mountains. Great for anyone who watches Fox News or Newsmax with a notepad handy to aid in the posts they will later be making on Facebook.
Fee: $50 and a denial that "under God" was a late addition to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Navy Seabees
We're not going to poke fun at any branch of the military, especially not the Seabees, which somehow had to wait until this year to be recognized with a Colorado military plate, despite having played a huge role in operations since its 1942 inception. There's gotta be some impatience there, right? I mean, the Space Force got its plate first, and it just turned four — not old enough to hold big-kid scissors yet, organizationally speaking. Anyway, this simple blue-and-white mountain design boasts a ’bee in a Dixie Cup hat, toting a gun and a set of tools — and is definitely the most surreal and frankly cool plate on this list.
Fee: None, but must provide proof of Navy service in the Construction Battalion.
Pioneer
Those who sport this golden-yellow plate featuring a Conestoga wagon pulled by oxen are using it to tell everyone that they were here first, even though they almost certainly weren't, as the Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, Navajo, Pueblo, Shoshone and Ute nations would like to remind everyone.
Fee: $50 and a NATIVE bumper sticker.
Pueblo Chile
This plate is colored the deep green of the skin of the Pueblo chile, the key ingredient in our state's famous green chile, and a big FU to New Mexico. It also says, "I know what capsaicin is," and "My mouth is always on fire, and I like it."
Fee: $50 and a strong familiarity with the Scoville scale.
Share the Road
Another plate that celebrates a mode of transportation that has nothing do with the registration in question, this cycling-enthusiast plate looks much like the Seabees model, except the cool bee has been replaced with a spandex-clad dude on a bike who's probably in your way as you're trying to get down a canyon road. Responsible bike people, this isn't meant for you — but too many of your two-wheeled family members only seem to believe that "share the road" means "I have the right to be in your way."
Fee: $50 plus a minimum donation of $25 to Bicycling Colorado (and probably some measure of hubris).
Stegosaurus
The striking orange design of this new plate will appeal to Colorado's would-be Indiana Joneses and Ross Gellers, the two extremes on the bell curve of those concerned with fossils. Logically, the plate also features an equally orange stegosaurus realistically depicted smack in the center of the plate. That's realistically depicted as far as we know — because real stegosauruses may have had iridescent feathers, and those spinal plates may have been decorated and bejeweled by the late-Jurassic equivalent of the Shane Company. 
Fee: $60 plus a minimum $50 donation to Friends of Dinosaur Ridge
Support the Horse
An inexplicable green sky over the traditional white mountains of Colorado — with a galloping steed silhouetted right in the center — shows off your somewhat ironic devotion to the very mode of transportation that replaced horses almost entirely. Also great for fans of the ’80s band Boys Don't Cry, for obvious cowboy-related reasons.
Fee: $50 plus a minimum $40 donation to the Colorado Horse Development Authority. Saddle up, Hoss.