In the six spaces on her customized Oregon license plate, Kelly Taylor opted for the word MAUMIN.

“Mine is a Nez Perce word that was used to distinguish appaloosas from paints and pintos,” Taylor said.

As the owner of an appaloosa, Taylor loves driving around with the horse reference on her car.

As the administrator of the Oregon Department of Transportation Rail Division, she is thrilled that the extra money she pays for the plate goes to fund passenger rail programs and a state-funded bus service her division oversees.

“So here I’ve got something that’s meaningful to me and, in another way, it’s meaningful because it is helping the train system,” Taylor said.

Specialized and custom license plates have brought in millions of dollars since they first became available in 1994, according to the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles. The proceeds help fund everything from watershed preservation projects to a state-subsidized bus service that runs from Redmond to Bend and to Chemult.

Oregonians can deck out their cars with plates that encourage fellow drivers to share the road with cyclists or to support the Oregon Cultural Trust.

While drivers can pay as little as $5 for their license plates, some opt to pay as much as $85 per set to benefit their favorite institution of higher learning or philanthropic organization.

Some programs get millions, while others may receive only a few hundred dollars, said David House, spokesman for the Oregon DMV.

The Oregon Masonic Family plate is one of the smaller revenue generators. But Grand Secretary Aaron Harvey said the $800 to $1,200 the organization gets from plate sales annually helps pay for biannual training sessions for Oregon teachers.

“It is designed to teach the teachers how to work as a team in working with troubled children,” Harvey said.

He said the last session, which was held in Bend, had about 30 teachers in attendance.

The Lions Club uses its plate money to help pay for two mobile health care screening units that travel around the state, said Paul Morris of the Oregon Lions Sight and Hearing Foundation.

The units serve those in need of a sight or hearing check who might not otherwise get one, Morris said.

Crater Lake National Park is one of the bigger beneficiaries, having received nearly $3 million since the dark blue Crater Lake plate was first issued in 2002.

Most of the money the park receives now goes to fund its science and learning center, which opened in 2006, said Park Ranger Don Clark.

License plate proceeds paid for the $2.2 million renovation of the former superintendent’s residence, according to the Crater Lake Institute Web site. The center now serves as a research facility and training center for science teachers and has a classroom that serves Oregon fourth- and fifth-graders who visit the park.

Plates bearing Oregon’s state fish — the salmon, of course — have benefitted the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board to the tune of nearly $6 million since 1998, according to House.

The board distributes the license plate funds primarily to pay for road projects and to replace culverts that affect fish habitat, said Carolyn Devine, communications manager for the watershed board. In 2007 alone, the board awarded more than $219,000 in license plate money, she said.

The DMV also offers veteran and service-related license plates. The additional fees for the tags generally benefit the sponsoring group, such as the Vietnam Veterans of America and the Oregon Veterans Home Trust, according to the DMV Web site.

Only one man in Oregon qualifies for the most notable veteran’s plate — the Congressional Medal of Honor plate. Bend veteran Robert Maxwell, 87, was given the multicolored license plate reading “CMH 1” in June 2007.

Like Taylor’s custom plate fee, Maxwell’s biannual $50 plate fee will go to benefit the ODOT Rail Division.

Taylor said that doesn’t just benefit her agency. “When they buy a custom plate, it goes to help the train and bus system, which in turn helps with the environment, and wear and tear from more cars on the roads,” she said.

The place of plates in history

• The first permanent license plates in Oregon were issued in 1950 and had black numbers on a silver background.

• In 1959, high school students chose the only license plate slogan ever printed in Oregon: Pacific Wonderland. The motto was deleted in 1963, after four years in circulation.

• The first graphic license plate, the now-famous tree plate, was issued in 1988. The coloring of the first batch was off, with a purplish sky, prompting complaints from drivers.