Alabama’s new beach license plate isn’t sweet for all

MONTGOMERY | The state’s new “Sweet Home Alabama” beach license tag doesn’t sit completely comfortably with at least one north Alabama tourism official.

The new state tag to be released in January depicts the words and a stylized gulf beach scene of sand, sea oats and water. It’s designed to alert out-of-staters that Alabama has about 50 miles of beach.

That’s well and good to a DeKalb County tourism official, but he would have liked a reminder of his area.

“We have two magnificent destinations in Alabama, the beach and the mountains,” John Dersham, director of the DeKalb County Tourism Association, said Wednesday. “I would have loved to see a tag with both the beach and the mountains.”

DeKalb County is atop Sand and Lookout mountains and houses one of the most beautiful but unlikely scenes in the eastern United States — deep Little River Canyon, which seems to offer visitors a vista that looks more like the western United States than Alabama.

Alabama Tourism and Travel Bureau Director Lee Sentell said the new tag plays off the instantly recognizable Lynyrd Skynyrd hit, “Sweet Home Alabama,” and pays homage to the beach’s significance in Alabama’s tourism industry.

“The beach is No. 1 destination from out of state,” Sentell said. “It lets people know we have a beach.”

“Sweet Home Alabama” became the state’s print and television tourism ad campaign a year ago to replace the “Stars Fell on Alabama” theme that has been in place since 2002.

“ ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ is the third most-played song identifying a destination, behind ‘New York, New York’ and ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco,’ ” Sentell said.

In addition to Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Sweet Home Alabama” has been performed by the Fort Payne-based group Alabama, which has another geographically based hit, “Mountain Music,” with the lyrics, “Oh, play me some mountain music, like grandma and grandpa used to play.”

Sentell said attracting tourists to Alabama’s coast will benefit all of Alabama because motorists usually have to travel the entire length of the state to get to Baldwin and Mobile counties.

Gov. Bob Riley said the tag reflects the coast’s importance to tourism — a $9.8 billion tourism revenue impact.

“A lot of people outside of Alabama don’t even know that we have beaches. When we put more than 3 million tags showing sea oats and a beautiful sunset over water into circulation, that will change,” Riley said.

The tag design is for five years. Vehicle owners will still be able to request the “God Bless America” license plate.