New Hampshire License Plate Slogan: Live Free or Die

New Hampshire's current standard passenger plate base began in January 1999. It shows the Old Man of the Mountain and Cannon Mountain against a pale blue sky, with "LIVE FREE OR DIE" centered at the top.

The Old Man of the Mountain collapsed in 2003, but the plate design and slogan continued. That makes the current plate both a slogan plate and a memorial to one of New Hampshire's best-known natural symbols.

The wording has remained stable even as plate layouts changed. The important timeline point is 1971 for the slogan, and 1999 for the current graphic base.

"Live Free or Die" comes from General John Stark, New Hampshire's Revolutionary War hero. In 1809, too ill to attend a veterans' reunion, Stark sent a toast that read: "Live Free or Die: Death is not the worst of evils."

New Hampshire adopted the phrase as the official state motto in 1945. It moved onto license plates in 1971, replacing the older tourism-style "SCENIC" wording.

The motto also produced one of the country's most important license-plate cases. In Wooley v. Maynard (1977), the U.S. Supreme Court held that New Hampshire could not punish residents for covering the motto when they objected to displaying it. The slogan stayed on the plates, but the state could not compel personal endorsement of the message.

From 1957 through 1970, New Hampshire standard plates carried "SCENIC." The slogan fit the state's tourism identity: White Mountains, lakes, foliage, and ski country.

The unusual year was 1963, when the plate read "PHOTOSCENIC." Plate-history records list it as a one-year departure from the Scenic wording. It is a rare and highly specific plate slogan, more like a tourism-photo campaign than a permanent state identity.

In 1971, "LIVE FREE OR DIE" replaced the Scenic-era wording and shifted the plate from landscape promotion to civic motto.

New Hampshire's slogan history has three clear entries: SCENIC, one year of PHOTOSCENIC, and the long-running state motto.