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

24 bars advertising displays, defined broadly to cover signs and advertising structures of any kind placed for outdoor advertising, on property adjacent to any freeway segment that has been landscaped, meaning planted with lawns, trees, shrubs, flowers or other ornamental vegetation requiring reasonable maintenance under Sec. 010(G). Sec. 8 mile south of Forsythe Creek. Sec. 030 states the operative prohibition: no advertising display may be placed or maintained on adjacent property if it is designed to be viewed primarily by persons traveling that landscaped section.

Sec. 040 carves out three narrow exemptions regardless of location: on-site signs advertising the sale or lease of the property itself, signs identifying the owner or occupant, and signs advertising a business, goods or services actually conducted or produced on that same property. Anything already up that violates Sec. 030 had to come down within three years of the Chapter's July 1961 effective date, or, if the landscaping project postdates the sign, within three years of the landscaping's completion or acceptance, whichever is later, per Sec.

050. The Chapter dates to 1961 (Ord. No. 418) and predates the modern zoning-code sign standards, so a freeway-facing commercial sign proposal in this corridor has to clear this specific restriction in addition to any Title 20 zoning sign permit.