1983/08/01 - 2024/05/10
Old
Front Plate Required: Yes
Area Codes: 218, 320, 507, 612, 651, 763, 952
License Plates:
Windshield Stickers:
Road and Highway Signs:
County Roads:
Highways:
Highway Adoption:
Historical:
As of 2023, Minnesota has a lot of snow coverage, especially in the southwest. Otherwise, rural Minnesota is basically dairy and soy bean farms. The standard license plate is a blue & white pattern, but it is a paler blue and appears greener than license plates of other states that use blue & white formats. Realistically, there are a lot of North Dakota plates in Minnesota, so don't rely on plates alone.
Standard license plate
Soy and dairy farms
Snow coverage
Minnesota uses black diamond warnings and several unique sign features, including yellow and black banding and diagonal braces on signs. They rely heavily on brick architecture, and traffic lights are generally on a pole with a diagonal support arm, many of which have a yellow base.
Black diamond warning sign
Yellow & black banding
Diagonal braces
Traffic signal structure
Rural locations in Minnesota can be difficult to distinguish from neighboring Wisconsin and North Dakota. Minnesota's inter-county highways are unique to the state, but otherwise sign banding and markings may be your only only clues. The white square county road sign is helpful, but several nearby states use similar signs and some counties use the standard blue pentagon instead. Colored square stickers behind stop signs can also help determine a location is in Minnesota instead of North Dakota, but they're just as often missing or faded as they are present.
Inter-county highway system
Minnesota
Colored square stickers
Minnesota has several unique bollards, including the yellow & black guardrail bollards. In Fargo, these can show you where the interstate leaves North Dakota and enters Minnesota.
Guardrail start bollard
Guardrail end bollard
Yellow paddle with black tip
White paddle with black tip
Express tollroad signs in Texas have the same color pattern as the Minnesota state highway sign.
Minnesota state highway
Dallas Express Toll
White square county road signs can also be found occasionally in South Dakota, Ohio, and in older coverage of Michigan, especially in the north and upper peninsula. It is also used in Apache County, Arizona, but the landscape of the American southwest is very different from the heavily wooded upper midwest.
White paddle bollards with black tips can also be found in California.
Minnesota
Black tipped drainage bollards are also used in North Dakota and Wisconsin, though Wisconsin generally uses a plastic bollard instead of metal.
Black tipped drainage bollard
A Guide to Corn in the USA by schitaco.