California State Route 86
highway in California
State Route 86 (SR 86) is a north–south state highway in the U.S. State of California that connects the Imperial and Coachella valleys in the southeastern desert region of the state. It runs from State Route 111 near the Mexican border crossing at Calexico north through the Imperial Valley via El Centro and Brawley, and around the west side of the Salton Sea into the Coachella Valley. It then goes through Coachella before terminating at Interstate 10 in Indio. Though some maps and signs may mark SR 86 as continuous through the City of Imperial, control of the route within the city was relinquished to that local jurisdiction and is thus no longer officially part of the state highway system. There are further plans for the state to relinquish control of the entire southern segment of SR 86 between its terminus at SR 111 and SR 78 near Brawley.
Route description
Route 86 is defined in section 386, subdivision (a), of the California Streets and Highways Code:
Route 86 is from:
(1) Route 111 to Route 8 near El Centro.
(2) Route 8 near El Centro to the southern limit of the City of Imperial.
(3) The northern limit of the City of Imperial to Route 10 in the City of Indio via the vicinity of City of Brawley.
Subdivision (b) permits the state to relinquish control of the southern portion of the highway between its terminus at Route 111 and Route 78/Fredricks Road north of Brawley to local jurisdictions. Since the City of Imperial took control of its segment of the highway by 2018, subdivision (e) further mandates that the city must still "maintain within its jurisdiction signs directing motorists to the continuation of Route 86".
“California State Route 86” enters the record as highway in California. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what California, State and Route can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q623797. Authority coordinates are 32.731, -115.508. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “California State Route 86” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.