Texas license plates are made by prisoners at the Wynne Unit on the north side of Huntsville, home of the state's only license plate factory. The Texas Legislature authorized the prison system in Huntsville to make the state's plates in 1933. The state historical marker at the Walls, the old penitentiary downtown, lists a license plate plant among the Depression-era measures to run the prison more efficiently, alongside canning operations and the Texas Prison Rodeo. The Wynne farm itself is older: the state bought it in 1883 from its last lessees, Cunningham and Ellis, and the present unit was dedicated in 1937 and completed in 1939. For most of the plant's history the plates were stamped. Raw plates were pressed to raise the characters and the date, then inked and baked dry in large ovens, a process that used 484 gallons of paint thinner and 396 gallons of petroleum-based ink a year.
The Panoramic Texas plate, first issued in 2000, with a cowboy, oil wells and the Space Shuttle across it, was the last design with raised letters and numbers. In 2009 Texas issued its first digitally printed general-issue plate, which removed the need for the chemicals.
In December 2024 the chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice told the board that inmates were producing about 80,000 general and 2,500 specialty plates a day, some 10 million plates a year in 850 designs.
Getting there
30.7411, -95.5768
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