If you’re one of Rhode Island’s 471 motorists with a license plate featuring the Pell Bridge and the lighthouse from nearby Rose Island, prepare to brag to your peers that you have the best license plate in the world.
That’s according to the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association. Members of the world’s largest license plate hobbyist group will be in Providence Monday morning to officially award the designation.
It’s the first time Rhode Island has received the honor in the association’s 71-year history, receiving a score of 396 points. Second place went to Idaho, whose “wildlife” plate featuring a bluebird scored 379 points.
Every spring, the association offers its members a chance to vote for their favorite plates issued during the previous calendar year — with 23 making this latest cut, including one from Canada and Australia. A representative from the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Rhode Island’s winning plate features a graphic of the Rose Island Lighthouse with the Claiborne Pell Bridge in the background as two Shields sailboats with mainsails marked by the numbers 18 and 70 glide by. The numbers are a reference to the year the lighthouse was completed and first shone its light over Narragansett Bay.
The plate was designed by Ross Cann of A4 Architecture + Planning with support from longtime lighthouse aficionado Jan Slee. Sailboat art was done by Kara Acosta.
First issued last summer, the plates were created under a 2022 law on behalf of the Rose Island Lighthouse and Fort Hamilton Trust, the nonprofit dedicated to preserving the historic and environmental integrity of the 18-acre island, revolutionary-era barracks, and historic lighthouse.
For every $43.50 plate registration, $20 goes back to the nonprofit.
“It takes money to achieve our mission,” Sean O’Connor, the trust’s executive director, said in an interview Friday. “The charity plates are a great fundraiser — and we’re starting to see them more and more on the road.”
But O’Connor acknowledged the slow rollout to get the plates out.
State law requires 600 pre-orders before plates can enter production. Within a year of the enabling legislation, O’Connor said only around 350 had been purchased. So to ensure production of the plates, he said the trust paid the Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) roughly $4,500 on the remaining pre-orders.
That means the fundraiser was actually a net negative.
O’Connor said he is hopeful the recognition by the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association will encourage more drivers to sport one on their vehicles.
“If we get just 500 new orders from July – December, that will result in $10,000 additional revenue for our education programs on Rose Island, as well as on-going maintenance and restoration work of the historic Rose Island Lighthouse, revolutionary-era Fort Hamilton Barracks, and native habitat restoration and bird monitoring in our wildlife refuge,” he wrote in an email.
As of Friday, DMV spokesperson Paul Grimaldi said there were 471 active registrations with the Rose Island plate design.
Gov. Dan McKee will be among those speaking at Monday’s event scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Department of Administration’s One Capitol Hill building. McKee will be joined by DMV Administrator Walter “Bud” Craddock; Cyndi McCabe, president of the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association; and state Rep. Lauren A. Carson of Newport, and Sen. Dawn Euer, both Newport Democrats.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
