CALIFORNIA WORLD MECCA FOR MOTORISTS!

So proclaimed a 1931 news blurb in the Riverside Daily Press, which summarized some of exotic places from which more than 91,000 out-of-state automobiles traveled to reach California the prior year. By the dawn of World War II, the count was almost half a million.

That such an accurate census could be compiled was due to a requirement that every car entering the state complete a registration form and obtain a permit to be displayed on the vehicle.

Back in 1916, a new motor law had issued a directive for non-resident car registration. Tourists driving into the state were required to register with authorities within 10 days of entering California, at which point a no-cost permit was issued for three months. For more than two decades, crossing the border required paperwork and resulted in what many scrapbookers and memento-seekers considered a roadtrip souvenir.

A press release published in many newspapers in May of 1920 announced that the California State Automobile Association had begun posting signs at “principle highway entrances to the state” that advised incoming tourists of the state law requiring registration within twenty-four hours. The border signs would “save embarrassment and confusion for non-resident motorists visiting California and likewise eliminate considerable trouble and expense to the State Motor Vehicle department.”

Why was all of this necessary in the first place? The motorist was not charged, so the practice brought no revenue and only added a new administrative burden.

The cause was the proliferation of auto theft. Car ownership in the Golden State was increasing exponentially, and as happens with any new technology that takes off, related crime follows. Organized theft rings operated between cities and states, and California was a ripe market for offloading stolen vehicles. The state saw a major influx of stolen cars imported from other areas for sale to unknowing (or selectively ignorant) buyers. The non-resident law required registration of a vehicle’s serial number, motor number, and a validation that the vehicle was duly registered in the driver’s name back in their home state.

A bulletin issued in 1919 affirmed that the “purpose of our identification is to guard against the registration of stolen cars brought into this state from other states.” That same year, insurance underwriters and police agencies partnered to compile registers of stolen vehicles to hinder the practice of stealing a car in one state and registering it in another to obtain “clean” documents.

Non-Resident License Plate tabs

Early non-resident permits were in the form of small, serialized metal tabs that attached to the existing out-of-state license plate, used through 1922. Anyone driving their car into California had to fill out paperwork AND attach a tab to their often-filthy license plates. 62,000 permits were issued in the first half of 1920 alone!

Tab shapes progressed through the years from a triangle (simply saying “NON RESIDENT LICENSE,” sans any reference to California), then a heart, a circle, and a bell.

Non-Resident Windshield Stickers

Starting in 1921, a much less burdensome requirement (and one likely much cheaper to produce and administer) was introduced: windshield permits. Easier to apply and to spot, these would be required for almost two decades – all the way until 1940 (these may have been used to supplement license plate tabs in 1921 and 1922, but afterwards became the sole validation required).

Other states, including Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, and Colorado, would implement similar requirements in the 1920s and 1930s.

At least two years of bell designs were used (WANTED: 1922 through 1924 California Non-Resident permits) before a forlorn-looking California bear made its way onto the permits in the midpoint of the decade.

The later 1920s saw a more straightforward design that replaced fancy graphics with a standard admonishment to Help Prevent Fires.

California ushered in the 1930s with more simplified, rectangular-cut designs for non-resident permits, which were probably much less prone to tearing. Preventing fires continued to be top of mind. Color schemes alternated between light and dark year-by-year to ease identification of expired permits.

The 1932 Los Angeles Olympics surely drove a spike in auto tourism, and the permits that year helped advertise the event.

In a move that would be copied by its neighbor to the north a few years later, tourism and marketing played a larger role in the design of the permits starting in the mid-1930s, with more attractive scenes of the state’s sights.

The 1940 stickers would be the last. The state legislature repealed the requirement in the spring of that year, with the state-line stations shut down by mid-May. Agricultural inspections, however, would continue (and still do). The repeal was strongly supported by auto clubs, who argued that the rule placed too high a burden on tourists and was laxly enforced to boot.

The practice was rapidly dying off across the western U.S., with neighboring Oregon’s own non-resident requirement less than a year away from ending as well (midway through 1941).

“Stupid and Useless”

There had been increasing, and more vocal, opposition to the practice. This was partly driven by a heightened focus on tourism hospitality for the anticipated surge in visitors to the state for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.

California had, according to a San Francisco Chronicle editorial in April 1939, “the thoroughly unwelcome distinction of being only one of 14 States out of the entire 48 which still inflict the stupid and useless non-resident permit law on visiting motorists.” A bill in the legislature that would have ended the practice had just been defeated.

“It is reasonable to believe,” the Chronicle continued, “that any non-resident car entering California with valid license plates of the home State presents acceptable evidence that the authorities of that State were satisfied with the registration of the vehicle.” The editorial noted that 450,000 automobiles carrying more than 1.2 million people had entered the state the previous year, and those visitors, “returning or writing home, either served as emissaries of good will for California or expressed disillusionment as to the quality of California hospitality. For the latter there can be no doubt that the onerous non-resident permit was largely responsible.”

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What happened if you forgot your vehicle’s paperwork when you crossed into California? Bureaucratic headaches, that’s what. This reprimand below was provided to one unlucky motorist in 1935 and provided strict instruction to contact the home state government for a registration copy. The penalty: take out a full California registration and get new California license plates.

Writing to your home state’s motor vehicle division and arranging the shipment of paperwork to your temporary address while on vacation is more than a minor inconvenience, and many tourists probably rolled the dice and continued their trip without completing their non-resident registration.

Statistical Highlights

An article published across many California newspaper in October 1934 noted “an amazing increase in the number of unemployed and indigent men coming into California” recorded from non-resident permit stats. The Depression and the Dust Bowl were raging, and like the Joad family from the Grapes of Wrath, more and more people were heading to the promised land of California. August and September of 1934 saw a 33 percent annual increase in inbound vehicles, with the Yuma station showing a massive 350 percent.

“Most of them tell our clerks they have been informed there will be plenty of work for the unemployed shortly in California. Reports of this kind apparently have been given wide circulation throughout the middle-west and the south,” said Russell Bevans, the state official in charge of non-resident stations.

Regular tourism still drove a good portion of vehicle activity, even during the Depression. Each year, license plates from every U.S. state could be seen in California, along with an impressive number of foreign ones.

During the first nine months of 1938, for example, the state issued 181,042 non-resident permits. Vehicles came from all over the globe: South Africa, “Arabia,” Bahama Islands, “Central America,” China, England, Australia, Chile, Cuba, France, Guam, Holland, Jamaica, Java, Philippine Islands, “South America,” Switzerland, India, Japan, Mexico, and Panama were the foreign “countries” (with a very loose and inconsistent definition of a country) represented in a press release published across the state.

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Today no documentation is required, but California remains an anomaly in the United States, still requiring an agricultural inspection for inbound vehicles.

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WANTED: I am always looking for California non-resident permits, and non-resident automobile permits from other states, to add to my collection. Please contact me if you have any that could use a good home!