Tagged Across America

Outside Cadillac Ranch at National Harbor. Photo by Moto MoJo

Outside Cadillac Ranch at National Harbor, the building itself wears the stories of America’s highways. Not just one, but several sprawling murals of license plates line its walls—each a collage of colors, numbers, and emblems pulled from every corner of the country.

These murals aren’t just decoration; they’re mosaics of movement. Every plate once clattered down an interstate, carried families across state lines, or marked a lone trucker’s endless run. Together, they form a gallery of American travel—Nebraska beside Florida, Iowa beside Washington, Texas beside the District.

Cadillac Ranch, with its name borrowed from the iconic roadside art of Amarillo, celebrates that restless spirit of the highway. The license plate murals echo that theme, as if the building itself has been patched together from the roads of a thousand journeys.

When the breeze blows off the Potomac, visitors say the walls seem to hum with memory, each plate whispering of the landscapes it once traversed: wheat fields, desert highways, coastal bridges, Appalachian curves. Standing before them, people find themselves drawn to the plates of their home states, or to states they dream of visiting—as though the mural knows the routes written into their hearts.

The murals of Cadillac Ranch are more than ornamentation. They are roadside shrines to the American drive, stitched from steel and enamel, holding the echoes of every road trip, every crossing, and every mile of freedom.