Arizona’s first ‘specialty’ plate: An homage to Fray Marcos de Niza

As a child of the ’70s, it does my Gen X heart good to see Alice Cooper’s likeness on a specialty license plate devoted to his Solid Rock Teen Centers. It’s unusual among the more than 100 license plates available in Arizona because it features an individual.

There was a time, however, when every license plate issued in this state honored a single person. That requires looking back to 1939, when celebrations throughout Arizona marked the 400th anniversary of an expedition that made Fray Marcos de Niza the first European known to have reached this area. 

The Arizona Highway Department designed that year’s license plate to honor Fray Marcos. It sported a vertical 1539 and 1939 on each side of the plate number and “Marcos de Niza” at the bottom, where “Grand Canyon State” would appear – to stay – the next year.

On top of that, the state Highway Commission called for a pamphlet celebrating Fray Marcos’ exploits to be distributed with each license plate. I couldn’t find a copy of this pamphlet, but the State Capitol Museum has the Marcos de Niza plate and kindly made it available to photograph.

With vehicles everywhere sporting this license plate, communities across Arizona held pageants, parades and other festivities throughout 1939 honoring Fray Marcos. The abundant newspaper coverage speaks to an era when depictions of European exploration paid little attention to the indigenous peoples these explorers encountered. Observances included dedicating a monument near the border at Lochiel, about 25 miles east of Nogales, where the Fray Marcos was said to have passed on his way north in search of fabled cities of gold. More than 10,000 people crowded Phoenix Union High School’s stadium to witness a grand pageant, “Pathways of Gold,” put on by hundreds of students. 

Tucson magazine put the Marcos de Niza plate on the cover of its December 1938 edition to set up the coming year. It did note some confusion, however: One resident, accustomed to seeing Pima County on his license plate, which had been the practice in preceding years, thought he’d been mistakenly issued a plate for Marcos de Niza County. The Casa Grande Dispatch carried a front page story on the plate, noting that “Arizona history … will be carried for the world to see and be reminded of the earliest history of what is now Arizona.” 

It’s a new era, and the odds would seem to be against “Marcos de Niza” pushing “Grand Canyon State” off Arizona license plates when the 500th anniversary arrives in 2039. But there still will be plenty of variety available thanks to elected leaders creating dozens of specialty plates that you can review and order at azmvdnow.gov/plates. These include plates honoring and supporting causes associated with the Navajo Nation, Dine College on the Navajo Nation, the San Carlos Apache Tribe and the White Mountain Apache Tribe.