Nebraska County Numbers

Here is a creative drawing of the State of Nebraska with it's 93 counties identified by  the number assigned on Motor Vehicle License Plates.  Motor vehicles in Nebraska were first registered in June 1905. Individuals made their own plates, and registrations were recorded with the Secretary of State. The plates were made of leather with metal numbers. This practice continued until 1915 when the Department of Motor Vehicles began issuing the plates. The Department assigned numbers to the plates, which were then made of metal. In 1922, the State established the practice of using prefix numbers to identify the counties in which vehicles were registered. Each county was assigned a number based on the number of registered vehicles in the county at that time. The county with the most vehicles, Douglas, was assigned the number 1; the county with the second highest number of vehicles, Lancaster, was assigned number 2; and so forth. Recently Douglas, Sarpy and Lancaster Counties have switched to using a combination of 3 letters in lieu of their earlier assigned number. My Dad worked for the State maintaining Highway #34 between Seward and the Lancaster Co.. line, at the time I was born and prided himself in knowing most of the county numbers. Information on the availability of the drawing can be found at www.93.com. Our Seward County number is 16 in the SE portion of the State.