Madera County, CA Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

160 was adopted to protect "viewsheds along the highway corridor" as development pressure built along the county's Highway 99 interchanges, and it replaces individual business signage with a shared program. The county divides the land within a half-mile of each of the eight existing interchanges into quadrants, and "each corner of each interchange shall be allowed one freeway sign," with other businesses in that segment treated as on-premise tenants entitled to space on the shared sign. The property owner where the sign sits maintains it "in a clean, attractive, structurally sound and electrically safe fashion" and must offer tenants fair access at a fair market rate; a tenant designs, fabricates, and installs its own panel and must remove it once its lease ends.

The dimensional table pairs sign type to quadrant size: a highway/freeway-oriented sign is limited to one per interchange quadrant, capped at 1,200 square feet and 90 feet in height, while agricultural and residential zones get no freestanding freeway signage at all. A qualifying freeway sign must sit within 150 feet of the freeway right-of-way on a parcel that abuts it, stay back 150 feet from any other street lot line, and set back from a residential zone by a distance at least equal to the sign's height.

Subsection (C) bans animated or rotating parts, signs attached to vehicles, sound, imitation traffic signs, balloons and inflatables, neon lighting, and glare that impairs a driver's vision, and it bars any new billboards in the corridor. A project spanning more than one building or parcel needs a master sign plan, and any freeway sign that can't meet the standard dimensions needs a planning commission variance, granted only on specific visibility findings tied to a one-third-mile or two-thirds-mile sightline before the freeway exit.