1959 Oregon Dealer License Plate

I found this original near mint Oregon Dealer plate here in Oregon from the grandson of Frank Windolph who owned Windolph Pontiac and Windolph Tractor. He not only sold the tractors, but built them right around the corner from the dealership. The building still stands today. The Pontiac dealership at 1901 West Burnside St. in Portland, is currently the location of PGE Park, which was the home of the Portland Beavers baseball for almost forever and is currnetly being renovated into a Major League Soccer venue. I checked with the DMV in Salem (It helps to have friends in high places!) and they verified that the dealer # 1394 did in fact belong to Windolph.



The plate itself is mint green and the embossed letters are dark green.........so 1950's! The photo was taken with my Android, so the color is a bit skewed. For some reason, Oregon changed the layout and colors of the plates every few years and they still do.

Chad, a fantastic find! Congratulations! Just think how cool this will be to display on your '59 Pontiac. Will Oregon allow you to register these plates to the car?

I still have the matched set of blue/yellow Oregon plates that my '59 Buick wore since the car was new. I've now mounted period-correct Washington plates on the car, but keep the Oregon plates displayed in a 1959-vintage license plate frame from the long-vanished Oylear-Howard Motors (Pontiac-Buick-GMC) dealership in Pendleton.

Thanks! I will display it at shows or make a frame for it. I probably could get it registered, but I want to keep the original plates that have been on the car since new. I took them off to repaint the front holder and replace the screws on the back. I drove it around for about a week with no plates. I was followed by 3 different Police cars, even the Oregon State Police and not one of them even batted an eye at me driving around with no plates! Years ago I was preparing to paint a 1956 Chevy 210. I did not have a paint booth at the time, so I had to drive about 15 miles to a friends shop to paint anything large. Here I was driving this 210 on the freeway and through town with no windows, interior, bumpers or trim and missing the entire front clip, which was stuffed in the back seat area and the radiator wired to pieces of EMT conduit to hold it up, with 4 mismatched tires on nasty looking wheels. Oh... a sight that must have been, with me wearing my coveralls, gloves, goggles and dog-eared camo hat to keep warm. It's kind of a bummer everybody didn't have phones with cameras then, it would have been a good one to have! Now you can't even retrieve that annoying booger at a red light without someone taking a picture or video of you and finding it on youtube later!! Ah..isn't progress great?

hahaha good one