South Dakota License Plate

Plate Designs

Great Faces. Great Places. (Current)

South Dakota's current plate is one of the most visually dramatic in the country, and there is no mystery about why — Mount Rushmore fills nearly the entire surface. A blue sky with a few white clouds forms the backdrop, and the carved granite faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln rise from the lower portion of the plate in detailed illustrated form, their stone expressions occupying the full width of the design. "South Dakota" appears at the top center in bold red cursive script, an energetic signature that contrasts sharply with the cool stone tones below it. Just beneath the state name, "GREAT FACES. GREAT PLACES." and "USA" appear in smaller black text — a slogan that doubles as a literal description of what you are looking at. The registration characters are rendered in large, thick black lettering with a white border, overlaid directly on top of the mountain imagery and readable at a glance despite the busy background. The sticker box sits in the lower right corner. The overall effect is unmistakable: this plate announces its state of origin from twenty feet away.

Great Faces. Great Places. (Previous)

The previous South Dakota plate uses the same Mount Rushmore imagery and "GREAT FACES. GREAT PLACES." slogan but executes the design in a cooler, more restrained monochromatic palette. The background sky is a soft light blue, and the mountain itself is rendered in muted sandy tan and beige tones, giving the whole plate a bleached, sun-washed quality compared to the vivid detail of the current version. "South Dakota" appears at the top in blue cursive script — elegantly styled but less punchy than the red of the current plate. The registration characters are large and bold in a medium blue, sitting comfortably over the lighter mountain tones without the high-contrast outlined treatment of the newer design. "GREAT FACES. GREAT PLACES." runs along the bottom in matching blue, anchoring the slogan at the foot of the plate rather than near the top. The sticker box sits in the lower right corner. This version reads as more understated and unified — everything exists in the same family of blues and tans — while the current plate is more graphic and assertive.

How Rare Is It on the Road Trip Game?

Rare. South Dakota has a population of roughly 910,000, making it the fifth least populous state in the country. The registered vehicle count is proportionally small, and most SD plates stay in a region — the Great Plains and northern Rockies — that many road-trippers never cross. I-90 cuts through the full width of the state and carries some cross-country traffic, and Mount Rushmore draws around two million visitors a year, so you will occasionally spot an SD plate at a rest stop far from home. But those vehicles are outnumbered at every turn by plates from more populous neighbors, and outside the Midwest you can go entire road trips without seeing one.

Spotting Tip

I-90 between Rapid City and the Wyoming border is the single best corridor — cross-country drivers and Mount Rushmore tourists concentrate here, and SD plates are relatively common at the Wall Drug billboard stretch and the rest areas west of Rapid City. If you're nowhere near the Dakotas, your best shot is at national parks: South Dakota residents road-trip heavily to Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, and Glacier, so look for SD plates in park entrance queues and campground lots during summer. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in early August also sends a wave of SD-registered vehicles out in every direction. Outside those windows and locations, patience is the main strategy.

Fun Fact

The four presidents on Mount Rushmore — Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln — were chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum not for their South Dakota connections (none of them had any) but for what he saw as their roles in founding, expanding, preserving, and uniting the country. The carving took 14 years, from 1927 to 1941, and was never fully finished — Borglum died in March 1941, and work stopped a few months later when funding ran out. The original plan called for the presidents to be depicted from the waist up, but only the faces were completed. South Dakota has carried those unfinished stone faces on its license plates since the 1990s, making it one of the few states where a single landmark so completely defines the plate's visual identity across multiple design generations.

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