Wyoming

Wyoming put a bucking horse and rider on its license plates in 1936 and has kept it there ever since. The image goes back further, to an insignia drawn by George Ostrom for the Wyoming National Guard during World War I, and it is a big part of why Wyoming is called the Cowboy State.

Rodeo is the other part. Cheyenne Frontier Days has been held since 1897, and its most famous bronc, a horse named Steamboat, bucked there in the early 1900s. Legend made him the model for the plate, though the 1936 drawing was based on a Lander cowboy, Stub Farlow.

The state guards the emblem closely. The Bucking Horse and Rider is a registered trademark of the State of Wyoming, and the University of Wyoming Cowboys wear their own version of it.

The poster is done in the flat, chunky style of mid-century travel art, with red bands top and bottom carrying the cream lettering. A rider in a cream hat, blue shirt and red neckerchief sits a bay bronc as it pitches forward and kicks up dust. Behind them are a red grandstand full of spectators, dark pines and sharp, snow-streaked peaks.