OK, my bad. The bike is a 1974 XL250. NOT a TL. Sorry about that. Anyway, problem is still the same. Not much info available on history but the location near tripple tree where these are usually stamped shows nothing. Does not look like a repaint job that covered it. Since I have no history info I cannot tell where it was last registered.
Thank you all for your responses. Hopefully someone will have another idea based on this model-change info.