Madera DMV Office: Hours, Services & Appointment Guide

1The county’s only office: one of one, not one of nine

Madera is the county seat and the largest city of Madera County — 66,224 people at the 2020 census, up from 61,416 in 2010, and an estimated 69,094 in 2024 — and its DMV office is the county’s only one: the full-service, full-time, kiosk-equipped office that serves the whole county of 156,255 people across 2,153 square miles. That is the honest frame for this office, and it matters because the assumption readers bring to this page is the one the template would have written for a bigger county: that a county this size must have a second office somewhere. It does not. Twelve other Madera County towns were checked on dmv.ca.gov on November 6, 2026, and every one of their field-office pages returns a 404: Chowchilla, Oakhurst, Coarsegold, North Fork, Ahwahnee, Raymond, Bass Lake, Yosemite Lakes, Madera Ranchos, Parkwood, Bonadelle Ranchos, and Rolling Hills. Coarsegold has a DMV Partner (Kenli, Inc — registration services only), not a field office. The county has just two incorporated cities — Madera and Chowchilla (19,039 people) — plus fifteen census-designated places, and all seventeen communities funnel their DMV business through 1206 Maple Street. This is the Susanville pattern, and the opposite of Indio: there, nine offices share one county; here, one office carries a whole county.

Madera’s claim to the office is older than the office itself. The city calls itself “The Heart of California,” and the claim is literal: Madera County sits at the geographic center of the state, in the San Joaquin Valley where State Routes 99, 41, and 145 meet. The city was founded in 1876 as a lumber town at the terminus of a 60-mile wooden V-flume built by the California Lumber Company — madera is Spanish for “lumber” or “wood” — and the first town lots were auctioned in October 1876. Madera County was carved out of Fresno County on May 16, 1893, and the city incorporated on March 27, 1907. The flume era ended in 1931–33, and irrigation from the San Joaquin River turned the plains into vineyards, nut orchards, and row crops; the county is now among the leading U.S. producers of grapes, almonds, pistachios, and figs. The city is young — median age 29.3, and 32.9% of residents under 18 — and that youth is a scheduling fact: three public high schools in Madera Unified (Madera High, Madera South High, and Sherman Thomas Charter High) feed their teens into this one office’s appointment book, and two brick-and-mortar driving schools in town serve them.

The second local fact that proves this page was researched in Madera is the Mendota closure. On Friday, September 26, 2025, at 4:00 pm, the DMV permanently closed its Mendota field office at 655 Quince Street, and its press release three days earlier named Madera FIRST among the alternates — “Madera: 1206 Maple St. (33 miles from the Mendota office)” — then Fresno Olive Avenue (34 miles), Fresno North (41 miles), and Clovis (45 miles). Mendota’s only remaining DMV presence is a self-service kiosk at Mendota City Hall, 643 Quince Street, open Monday to Friday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. So Madera absorbed a whole neighbouring town’s DMV traffic overnight, and it did so more than a year ago: the closure is not ongoing disruption, it is the proof that Madera is the region’s fallback office. The trap is that the DMV’s own Madera page still lists Mendota in its nearby block with garbled all-closed hours (“Mon-Tue Closed / Wed closed — closed / Thu-Sun Closed”) — a reader who copies hours from a nearby listing instead of the office’s own page will drive to a closed office. Never copy hours from a nearby listing: the same glitch shows Madera itself, Fresno North, Clovis, and Fresno (Olive Avenue) as “Wed closed” on partner pages, and all four are open Wednesdays, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, on their own pages.

Madera’s third angle is the Yosemite route. State Route 41 runs north from Madera through Coarsegold and Oakhurst toward Yosemite National Park, so this office is the last full-service DMV on the Yosemite route before the mountains: the next office north on that corridor is Mariposa, 38.1 miles away in a straight line and open Tuesday and Thursday only, and the mountain towns of the county — Oakhurst, Coarsegold, North Fork, Bass Lake — have no office of their own. Kenli, Inc in Coarsegold is the only DMV presence of any kind up that road, and it is a partner, not an office.

Three honesty notes before the detail starts. First, no wait-time figure is printed anywhere on this page: the DMV publishes a live wait-times snapshot that changes by the minute, and a single number would be stale the moment it was printed. Second, no star rating is printed: a Google place rating exists for this office, and it is not printed, on the same policy as every office page on this site. Third, no fee amount is printed: no permit, REAL ID, or registration fee is stated anywhere on this page, because no fee amount was verified for this office at build time. What is printed is what was verified on dmv.ca.gov on November 6, 2026, corroborated by a second source wherever a fact carries weight, and labelled when it could not be.

2Address — Maple Street, downtown, and the two wrong addresses to ignore

The Madera DMV office is at 1206 Maple Street, Madera, CA 93637. The address is confirmed four ways: the DMV’s own Madera field-office page, the DMV’s place data (coordinates 36.949835, −120.072595), the per-office reference that lists it as 1206 Maple Street, and the DMV’s September 23, 2025 Mendota closure press release, which gives the same address. Trust the four-way confirmation, because the internet also circulates a wrong address for this office: one Madera driving school’s own FAQ page tells its students “The Madera DMV is at 1280 Country Club Drive, Madera, CA 93638.” That is not the DMV. The same school also claims its instructors “prepare students for the specific test routes used at this location” — the DMV publishes no test routes, for this office or any office, so that claim cannot be true either. If a map app or a listing site sends you anywhere other than 1206 Maple Street, the listing is wrong.

The second wrong address is a different city entirely. Every search for “Madera DMV” returns results for Corte Madera, a city in Marin County about 150 miles away, whose DMV office sits at 75 Tamal Vista Boulevard, Corte Madera, CA 94925. Corte Madera is not Madera: this office is in the San Joaquin Valley, in Madera County, on Maple Street, and the Marin County office cannot do California DMV business for a Madera reader any more than a Nevada office could. If a result says “Corte Madera,” it is the wrong town.

Getting there is straightforward, and the highways matter. Madera sits on State Route 99, the valley’s north–south spine, with State Route 41 running north to Coarsegold, Oakhurst, and Yosemite, and State Route 145 running east through Madera Ranchos toward Friant. The office sits downtown, on Maple Street just north of Yosemite Avenue — the same downtown that holds the Madera County Connection’s Downtown Madera Intermodal Center at East Yosemite Avenue and North E Street, where the county’s four intercity bus routes meet. No bus route or stop is published as “the DMV stop,” and no route serving 1206 Maple Street by name was verified, so this guide does not invent one: check the planner for the downtown stop nearest Maple Street. Madera Metro, the city’s bus system, runs four fixed routes with 102 stops on weekdays from 7:00 am to 6:30 pm; the Green and Blue lines have no Saturday service. The Madera Amtrak station sits about five miles north of the Intermodal Center, and the Gold Runner intercity service connects the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Summer heat is the practical local fact: average highs exceed 90°F on more than 100 days a year and top 100°F on nearly 30 days, with a record high of 116°F on July 13, 1961 — so take the 8:00 am slot rather than a midday appointment, and do not plan a long wait outside in July. No parking description is printed anywhere on this page: no source describes the lot, and this guide does not invent one.

3Hours — five days a week, Wednesday opens at nine, and the Veterans Day week

Madera keeps the standard full-time pattern: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, and Wednesday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. The office is closed Saturday and Sunday, and there is no lunch closure — each open day is one continuous slot. The hours below are the DMV’s own calendar for the two weeks it publishes, re-read on November 6, 2026, and they agree with the full-week table on the per-office reference and with the aggregator that lists the same hours.

The week of November 9–13, 2026 is the week to plan around. The office is open Monday November 9, Tuesday November 10, Thursday November 12, and Friday November 13, and closed Wednesday, November 11 for Veterans Day — every DMV field office in California is closed that day, and the official Madera calendar shows November 11 as closed. The same week pattern applies to every office in the alternatives table in section 10, with one exception that matters: Mariposa and Los Banos are open Tuesday and Thursday only, so in the week of November 9 they are open Tuesday November 10 and Thursday November 12 and closed the other three weekdays. The office is also closed Thursday November 26 and Friday November 27 for Thanksgiving, and Friday December 25 for Christmas Day, on the statewide DMV holiday list. Written knowledge tests are not offered after 4:30 pm anywhere in California, so a late-afternoon arrival cannot start a written test even though the office stays open until 5:00 pm.

Two warnings belong in this section because both send readers to closed doors. The first is the “Wed closed” glitch: the DMV’s own nearby listings — on the Madera page itself and on partner pages — show Madera, Fresno North, Clovis, and Fresno (Olive Avenue) as “Wed closed — closed,” and the same glitch class showed Palm Desert and Palm Springs as closed on Wednesdays in the Indio build. All four offices are open Wednesdays, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, on their own pages; never copy hours from a nearby listing. The second is the Mendota listing: the official Madera page still shows the Mendota field office in its nearby block, with garbled all-closed hours, more than a year after it permanently closed. Mendota is not an alternative office. Its City Hall kiosk is the only Mendota option that survives. The 7:00 am Wednesday early opening that about sixty high-volume offices run does not apply to Madera: this office opens at 9:00 am on Wednesdays, and the Fresno IBC’s 7:00 am open is a different facility at a different service level, not a field office.

4Services at this office

The DMV’s Madera page lists nine service groups, and the list is the whole story of what the counter does. The most useful thing about the list is its ninth line: “Self Service Terminals.” That is how the DMV’s own page tells you there is a kiosk in this building — and the page says so in a banner too: “This office has a self-serve kiosk to avoid waiting in line.” That makes Madera the opposite of the no-kiosk offices in this series: the kiosk is here, inside the office, and it is the first thing a renewal or records errand should use instead of the counter line. The nine groups are the standard full-service set, and they are the reason this office exists: everything a first-time applicant, a new resident, a teen permit holder, or a title transfer needs, five days a week, in the county seat.

Three service facts deserve their own sentences because they decide whether your trip is necessary at all. First, REAL ID is offered here — a first-time REAL ID is an in-person visit with original documents, and section 7 has the list. Second, CDL road tests are not offered here: Madera is tagged “No CDL test,” and neither is Fresno North, Fresno (Olive Avenue), Clovis, Merced, Mariposa, Reedley, Los Banos, Hanford, Turlock, Visalia, or Tulare — every office checked in Madera’s orbit is CDL-no, and the nearest CDL test site is Modesto, about 69.3 miles away in a straight line. Third, the counter does not do renewals, records, or replacement licenses: registration renewals, license and ID renewals (unless your notice says in-person), driver and vehicle records, and replacement licenses have no counter service at any DMV field office, and Madera is no exception — those errands go online, to the kiosk in this building, to the Mendota City Hall kiosk, to a partner, or by mail, and driving to Maple Street for them is a wasted trip. Payments at the counter are cash, check, credit card, debit card, digital wallet, and money order. The phone number is the statewide DMV number, 1-800-777-0133: no office-direct number is published for Madera, and no phone number appears on the official Madera page at all. One aggregator lists a “+1-332-244-414” number for this office — that number is bogus and unverified; do not call it.

5Appointments: how to book, what needs one, and walk-ins

Book on dmv.ca.gov or by phone at 1-800-777-0133. Appointments on dmv.ca.gov are free — never pay a booking site — and an appointment is recommended for almost everything that needs the counter, and required for the behind-the-wheel drive test, which is appointment-only. For other counter business, a walk-in is possible but not promised, and the honest advice for a one-office county is blunt: without an appointment you may wait a long time, because there is no second office in the county to absorb the overflow. The statewide pattern — early mornings quietest, the first and last week of the month and Mondays busiest — is a statewide pattern, not a Madera figure, and no Madera wait-time figure is printed on this page.

Walk-ins exist, and one locator site is wrong about them. A guide site claims “You cannot walk in without an appointment — the DMV stopped accepting walk-ins during the pandemic and has not returned to that system.” That is wrong. Walk-ins exist through Get in Line, the DMV’s same-day virtual queue, which runs Monday to Friday, 7:50 am to 4:00 pm, and 8:50 am to 4:00 pm on Wednesdays — the queue opens ten minutes before the office does, so Wednesday’s 9:00 am open means an 8:50 am queue. Get in Line was never discontinued: the QR Virtual Intake that arrived in April 2026 is an addition to it, not a replacement. You cannot walk in for a behind-the-wheel drive test, and you cannot walk in for a renewal, a record, or a replacement license, because those have no counter service at all. To view or cancel an appointment, the DMV’s lookup asks for first name, last name, and telephone number only — there is no confirmation-number field, and any guide that tells you to find a confirmation number is wrong.

Two appointment traps are specific to this county. The first is the “41 field offices” figure that the same locator site prints on one page while printing “over 170 field offices” on another: “41” is wrong, and the DMV’s own figure is about 170 offices statewide — which is exactly why a one-office county like Madera’s has no slack. The second is the booking window itself: no blanket “book 60 days ahead” or “slots open at midnight” rule is verified for this office, and this guide does not print one. Book as early as the system lets you, check back for cancellations, and if Madera shows nothing, check Fresno North first — 17.9 miles away in a straight line, same hours, same test types except the motorcycle skills test, and a kiosk inside — then Fresno (Olive Avenue) and Clovis, before giving up. Offices serve all California residents regardless of home address, so a Madera reader is not locked to Madera.

6Driving tests at Madera: behind-the-wheel, motorcycle, and written — and the CDL gap

Madera offers three test types, and the fourth is the one that sends commercial drivers north. Behind-the-wheel drive tests, motorcycle skills tests, and written knowledge tests are all offered here; CDL road tests are not. The drive test is appointment-only — no walk-in drive test exists — and written knowledge tests are not offered after 4:30 pm anywhere in California, so book the drive test early and take the written test before the last hour of the day.

The teen funnel is the reason the drive-test book fills. Madera Unified has three public high schools — Madera High, Madera South High, and Sherman Thomas Charter High, all confirmed active in the California Department of Education directory — and the county’s other high schools funnel their teens through this one office too. Two brick-and-mortar driving schools are in town: Superior Driving School of Madera at 1516 Howard Road (1-559-673-4060; Monday to Thursday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Friday 8:00 am to 2:00 pm, Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm), which offers its car for the DMV drive test and requires under-18s to complete six hours of behind-the-wheel training first; and Aasaan Driving School at 286 Solano Street (1-408-890-8122), a husband-and-wife school teaching in Punjabi, Hindi, and English, which offers behind-the-wheel instruction, DMV test preparation, and a car rental for the test. Coastline Academy serves Madera with home pickup and DMV-certified instructors, and Drivers Ed Direct offers the online DMV-approved course for Madera County students. Two cautions: neither school’s DMV occupational-license number was verified on the DMV lookup at build time, so this guide does not call either one “DMV-licensed” — check the DMV’s own lookup before you pay — and Aasaan’s “1280 Country Club Drive” address for the DMV is wrong, as section 2 says. The DMV publishes no test route for this office, or for any office: the part to prepare for is the pre-drive safety check and the Driving Performance Evaluation, not a memorised route. Summer heat is a test-day fact too: with average highs above 90°F on more than 100 days a year, a morning drive-test slot beats a midday one.

One more test fact, because it decides where commercial drivers go. Madera is not the only CDL-no office in the valley — Fresno North, Fresno (Olive Avenue), Clovis, Merced, Mariposa, Reedley, Los Banos, Hanford, Turlock, Visalia, and Tulare are all CDL-no as well, and the Fresno Commercial Drive Test Center at 735 East North Avenue is a testing-and-records facility, not a field office, whose CDL status was not verified at build time and is not asserted here. The nearest verified CDL test site is Modesto, 124 Burney Street, about 69.3 miles away in a straight line; Stockton, 55 South Lincoln Street, also offers CDL tests and lies farther north on the same State Route 99 corridor. Do not book a CDL test at Madera, and do not drive to Fresno North, Clovis, or Reedley expecting one: the motorcycle skills test is a different story — Fresno North, Reedley, Tulare, and Mariposa do not list a motorcycle skills test, while Madera, Fresno (Olive Avenue), Clovis, Merced, Los Banos, Hanford, Turlock, Visalia, and Modesto do.

7REAL ID at Madera

REAL ID is offered at Madera. A first-time REAL ID is an in-person visit with original documents: one proof of identity, one proof of Social Security number, and two proofs of California residency, all originals or certified copies — photocopies and phone photos are not accepted. Book an appointment, and check the documents before you drive: a missing document is the commonest reason a REAL ID trip is wasted. Since May 7, 2025, a REAL ID or another acceptable federal document has been required to board a domestic flight. The office’s full-time hours and its kiosk do not change the REAL ID rule: a first-time REAL ID cannot be done at a kiosk, cannot be done by mail, and cannot be done through a partner — the AAA Madera Branch cannot do a REAL ID, and neither can ELITE PRO, Rincon Norteno, SUNNYSIDE, Kenli, or any other partner on the official page. Partners do registration services only. Renewals of an existing REAL ID are a different matter: if your notice does not say in-person, a renewal may be possible online or at the kiosk — read the notice before you book. The DMV’s own REAL ID fee is not stated anywhere on this page, because no fee amount was verified for this office at build time.

The practical REAL ID advice for a one-office county is the same as the appointment advice: book early, because the same single office serves every first-time REAL ID applicant in a county of 156,255 people, and a rejected document means a second trip to the same office. Bring the identity document, the Social Security document, and two residency proofs in the original, and bring the appointment confirmation. If the office is booked, Fresno North, Fresno (Olive Avenue), Clovis, and Merced all offer REAL ID with the same hours pattern, and all four have a kiosk inside — but a REAL ID still needs the counter, not the kiosk.

8Kiosk — and how to skip the trip entirely

The kiosk is the most useful thing in this building for most readers, because the transactions it handles are the ones the counter does not. The office has a self-service kiosk inside — the DMV’s own page carries a banner saying so, and “Self Service Terminals” is the ninth service on its list — and the DMV’s kiosk page for this office returns a live result. Kiosks print registration stickers and handle renewals and records; they cannot do a first REAL ID, a first license, or a drive test. A credit or debit transaction at a kiosk carries a 1.95% service fee, on the DMV’s statewide kiosk terms.

Three things about this table are worth saying plainly. First, there is no retail or grocery-store kiosk in Madera itself: the official Madera page’s nearby list contains no retail kiosk, and the Save Mart at 1504 Howard Road has no DMV kiosk listing — the nearest retail kiosks are all south, in Clovis and Fresno, and this guide does not invent one in Madera. Second, four partners show “Mon–Sun Closed” on the official page — Western Transportation Systems Inc (450 South Madera Avenue, Suite B, 1-559-479-0633), Madera Smog Check – 99705 (96 East 6th Street, 1-559-479-4285), Circle One Business Services (1112 North Lake Street, 1-559-363-0110), and Ornelas Tax Services (601 South Madera Avenue, Kerman, 1-559-647-9757) — and that is the DMV’s display for businesses whose hours it does not publish, not proof they are closed. This guide lists their names, addresses, and phone numbers only, and prints no hours for them. Third, no county kiosk or partner count is stated: the per-office reference did not publish one for Madera County, and this guide does not invent one. The Saturday question is answered by the table, not by the office: the office is closed Saturdays, and the Saturday options are AAA Madera (members only, DMV desk 9:00 am to 4:30 pm), ELITE PRO (10:00 am to 1:00 pm), Rincon Norteno (10:00 am to 6:00 pm), SUNNYSIDE in Kerman (10:00 am to 2:00 pm), and the grocery-store kiosks in Clovis and Fresno, which run daily. No DMV field office in the county is a Saturday option, because there is only one office and it is closed.

9Madera County guide: which town, which office

Madera County has two incorporated cities and fifteen census-designated places, and one DMV field office between them. The table below is the whole county: every community, and the office it funnels to. The answer is the same for all seventeen — Madera, at 1206 Maple Street — and the differences are only in how far the drive is and which road it takes. The county’s second city, Chowchilla, is reached from Madera by the Madera County Connection’s Route 3, which runs Downtown Madera to Chowchilla via Fairmead, Monday to Friday, five trips a day. The mountain towns — Oakhurst, Coarsegold, North Fork, Bass Lake, and Yosemite Lakes — are served by the Madera County Connection’s Route 4, which runs Downtown Madera to Yosemite Lakes, Coarsegold, Oakhurst, Bass Lake, North Fork, and South Fork, Monday to Friday, five trips a day, largely following State Routes 145 and 41; Kenli, Inc in Coarsegold is the only DMV presence of any kind up that road, and it is a registration-services partner, not an office.

That is twelve no-office towns, checked one by one on dmv.ca.gov on November 6, 2026, plus the county’s other communities, which have no office either. The “dmv near me” answer for the whole of Madera County is this office — Madera, Chowchilla, Fairmead, Madera Ranchos, Parkwood, Bonadelle Ranchos, Oakhurst, Coarsegold, North Fork, Ahwahnee, Bass Lake, Yosemite Lakes, and Raymond all point here, and the next office in any direction is Fresno North, 17.9 miles away in a straight line, in another county. And the Corte Madera warning belongs here too: if a search result offers a “Madera DMV” in Marin County, it is a different city 150 miles away, and its office cannot help a Madera County reader.

10If Madera is closed or booked: the nearest alternatives

If Madera is booked, closed for Veterans Day, or closed for the weekend, the alternatives are all in other counties, and the table below ranks them by straight-line distance from Madera. Distances are straight-line, computed from the DMV’s own place-data coordinates, and labelled as such — road distances are longer, and no road distance is printed here except the DMV’s own press-release figures from Mendota. The first three are the practical alternates: Fresno North, Fresno (Olive Avenue), and Clovis, all full-time, all with a kiosk inside, all within 24 miles in a straight line.

* Distances are straight-line, computed from the DMV’s place-data coordinates; road distances are longer. The DMV’s own road distances, measured from Mendota in its September 23, 2025 closure press release, are Madera 33 miles, Fresno (Olive Avenue) 34 miles, Fresno North 41 miles, and Clovis 45 miles.

Four lessons hide in this table, and each one saves a wasted drive. The first is the Tuesday/Thursday lesson: Mariposa and Los Banos are open two days a week only, so a reader who drives to Mariposa on a Monday finds a closed office — and two locator sites get Los Banos wrong, one printing “520 I Street” and “Mon–Fri 8–5” and the other printing “Mon/Tue 8–5, Wed 9–5,” when the correct address is 814 West L Street and the correct hours are Tuesday and Thursday only. The second is the Fresno lesson: Fresno has two full field offices — Fresno North at 6420 North Blackstone Avenue and Fresno (Olive Avenue) at 655 West Olive Avenue — plus the Fresno IBC at the same address as Fresno North, which opens 7:00 am to 4:00 pm (Wednesday 8:00 am to 4:00 pm) and is an industry and commercial facility, not a field office, plus the Fresno Commercial Drive Test Center at 735 East North Avenue, which does testing and records only. Pick the right one before you drive. The third is the Reedley-address lesson: the correct address is 1890 East Dinuba Avenue, and the old 558 East Dinuba Avenue still circulates on four listing sites — all stale. The fourth is the Mendota lesson: the Mendota field office is permanently closed, and the DMV’s own nearby listing still shows it as if it existed, so verify before you drive to any office this table names. The nearest office to Madera now has its own page on this site: see our Fresno North DMV guide for its hours, services, and the same-address IBC trap. The Fresno (Olive Avenue) office is covered in our Fresno DMV guide.

11Best time to visit — what to bring — and getting there without a car

No Madera wait-time figure is printed on this page, and the best-time advice below is the statewide pattern, labelled as such: early mornings are quietest, the first and last week of the month and Mondays are busiest, and the 8:00 am slot is the coolest in a city where average highs exceed 90°F on more than 100 days a year. Book the first appointment of the day if you can, and never book a drive test or a tight appointment during a festival weekend in a neighbouring valley city without checking the road first — the same rule the Indio guide applies to its festival city applies here to any event that floods State Route 99. What to bring depends on the transaction, and the table below is the short version; the full document lists are on the DMV’s own pages for each transaction.

New residents have two deadlines, and the internet reverses them: vehicle registration is 20 days (California Vehicle Code section 4152.5) and the driver’s license is 10 days (Vehicle Code section 12505(c)). The order matters — register the car within 20 days, get the license within 10 — and the minimum insurance is 30/60/15 (Senate Bill 1107, from January 1, 2025), not the stale 15/30/5 that competitor pages still quote. Getting there without a car is possible but needs a planner check: Madera Metro runs four fixed routes with 102 stops on weekdays from 7:00 am to 6:30 pm, with no Saturday service on the Green or Blue lines, and the Madera County Connection runs four routes from the Downtown Madera Intermodal Center at East Yosemite Avenue and North E Street — Route 1 to Madera Community College and Valley Children’s Hospital (Monday to Friday, five trips a day), Route 2 to Eastin Arcola, Ripperdan, and La Vina (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, two trips a day), Route 3 to Chowchilla and Fairmead (Monday to Friday, five trips a day), and Route 4 to Yosemite Lakes, Coarsegold, Oakhurst, Bass Lake, North Fork, and South Fork (Monday to Friday, five trips a day). The Intermodal Center is downtown, the office is downtown, and both systems serve downtown Madera — but no route or stop is published as serving 1206 Maple Street by name, so check the planner for the downtown stop nearest Maple Street. The Madera Amtrak station sits about five miles north of the Intermodal Center, served by the Gold Runner intercity service between the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, with a transfer to Madera Metro required.

12Why this office matters: the county’s only office, the Mendota overflow, and the errors the internet makes about it

This office matters for three reasons, and none of them is the one the template would have written. First, it is the only DMV office in Madera County and the county seat’s office: 66,224 people in the city and 156,255 in the county, seventeen communities, one counter. Every permit, first drive test, first REAL ID, and title transfer in the county runs through 1206 Maple Street, and there is no second office inside the county line to absorb a closure, a booked-out week, or a rejected document. Second, it is the DMV’s own overflow choice for the region: when Mendota closed permanently on September 26, 2025, the DMV’s press release named Madera first among the alternates, 33 road miles away — and when Madera is booked, Fresno North is 17.9 miles the other way. A county with one office does not strand its readers only because the offices around it are close, and this office is the end of that chain. Third, it is the Yosemite gateway: the last full-service DMV on the State Route 41 corridor before the mountains, serving the mountain towns that have no office of their own, with the county’s teen funnel — three public high schools in Madera Unified, two driving schools in town, and every first license in the city — running through the same appointment book.

The errors the internet makes about this office are the reason this guide exists, and they are worth naming one last time, because each one sends a real reader to the wrong place. The “Corte Madera” confusion is the biggest: a different city in Marin County, about 150 miles away, pollutes every “Madera DMV” search, and its office cannot help a Madera County reader. The “1280 Country Club Drive” address is wrong: the office is at 1206 Maple Street, and the driving school that prints the wrong address also claims “specific test routes” that the DMV does not publish. The “+1-332-244-414” phone number is bogus: the only number is the statewide 1-800-777-0133. The “no walk-ins” claim is wrong: walk-ins exist through Get in Line, Monday to Friday, 7:50 am to 4:00 pm, and 8:50 am to 4:00 pm on Wednesdays. The “41 field offices” figure is wrong: California has about 170. The “Wed closed” line for Madera on the DMV’s own nearby listing is a glitch: Madera is open Wednesdays, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, on its own page. The Mendota office is closed: it shut permanently on September 26, 2025, and only its City Hall kiosk survives. The Reedley address “558 East Dinuba Avenue” is stale: the correct address is 1890 East Dinuba Avenue. The Los Banos address “520 I Street,” phone “(209) 827-0561,” and hours “Mon–Fri 8–5” are all wrong: Los Banos is at 814 West L Street, open Tuesday and Thursday only, and its only number is 1-800-777-0133. The Saturday assumption is wrong: no DMV field office in the county is open on Saturday, and the Saturday options are the AAA branch, the partners, and the grocery-store kiosks. And the population figures are the 2020 census count of 66,224 and the 2024 estimate of 69,094 — the only two population figures this guide prints, because no other figure was verified. A page that gets the county, the address, the neighbours, the hours, and the population right is a page a reader can drive on — and that is the standard this one was built to.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• California DMV — Madera Field Office (address, hours calendar Nov 1–14, 9 services, kiosk banner, payments, nearby list; closed Wed Nov 11 Veterans Day): dmv.ca.gov/portal/field-office/madera/
• California DMV — press release September 23, 2025, “Mendota DMV Office Permanently Closing September 26” (Mendota closed 4 pm Friday, September 26, 2025; Madera named FIRST among alternates, 33 road miles; Fresno Olive Ave 34 mi, Fresno North 41 mi, Clovis 45 mi): dmv.ca.gov press release September 23, 2025
• California DMV — Fresno North Field Office (6420 N Blackstone Ave; hours; kiosk), Fresno Field Office (655 W Olive Ave), Clovis Field Office (2103 Shaw Ave), Merced Field Office (1313 W 12th St), Mariposa Field Office (5264 CA-49; Tue/Thu only), Reedley Field Office (1890 E Dinuba Ave), Los Banos Field Office (814 W L St; Tue/Thu only), Hanford Field Office (701 W Hanford Armona Rd), Turlock Field Office (825 E Monte Vista Ave), Visalia Field Office (1711 E Main St), Tulare Field Office (274 E Cross Ave), Modesto Field Office (124 Burney St; CDL test), Stockton Field Office (55 S Lincoln St; CDL test), Fresno IBC (6420 N Blackstone Ave; 7–4, Wed 8–4; not a field office), Fresno Commercial Drive Test Center (735 E North Ave; testing and records only)
• California DMV — kiosk page status checks (November 6, 2026): 200 = madera, fresno-north, clovis, merced, los-banos, hanford, tulare, fresno, modesto, turlock, mendota-city-hall; 404 = mariposa, reedley, visalia, mendota-field-office
• California DMV — field-office slug status checks (November 6, 2026): 404 = chowchilla, oakhurst, coarsegold, north-fork, ahwahnee, raymond, bass-lake, yosemite-lakes, madera-ranchos, parkwood, bonadelle-ranchos, rolling-hills; 200 = mendota (closed), fresno-north, fresno, clovis, merced, hanford, los-banos, visalia, reedley, tulare, mariposa
• California DMV — place data, Madera DMV (coordinates 36.949835, −120.072595; phone +1 800-777-0133); place data for Fresno North, Fresno (Olive), Clovis, Merced, Mariposa, Reedley, Los Banos, Hanford, Turlock, Visalia, Tulare, and Modesto (straight-line distances computed from these coordinates)
• California DMV — Kenli, Inc business-partner page (35285 Ca-41 Unit D, Coarsegold; Mon–Fri 8–5; 1-559-658-2777): dmv.ca.gov/portal/business-partner/kenli-inc/
• dmvca.info — Madera DMV page (hours, services, drive + motorcycle + written, no CDL, kiosk, REAL ID; verified June 5, 2026; closure checked October 31, 2026) and per-office pages for Fresno North, Clovis, Merced, Mariposa, Reedley, Los Banos, Hanford, Turlock, Visalia, Tulare, Fresno, Modesto, and Stockton (compare tables re-checked at build, November 6, 2026: Fresno North, Reedley, Tulare, and Mariposa list no motorcycle skills test; Modesto and Stockton list a CDL test)
• U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts — Madera city, California (66,224 in 2020; 61,416 in 2010; 69,094 estimated 2024)
• Wikipedia “Madera, California” (city facts, history, climate, highways SR 99 / SR 41 / SR 145; founded 1876; county created May 16, 1893; incorporated March 27, 1907) and “Madera County, California” (156,255 in 2020; 2,153 sq mi; two incorporated cities; fifteen census-designated places)
• California Department of Education — School Directory, Madera Unified (Madera High, Madera South High, Sherman Thomas Charter High, all active)
• Madera Metro / Public Transit — madera.gov (four routes, 102 stops, weekdays 7:00 am – 6:30 pm, no Saturday Green/Blue service) and Madera County Connection — mcctransit.com (four routes from the Downtown Madera Intermodal Center; office 201 W Almond Ave; (559) 263-8080)
• AAA — Madera Branch (221 N G St; DMV desk hours Mon–Fri 9–6, Sat 9–4:30; branch hours Mon–Fri 9–6, Sat 9–5; members only; up to 1.72% credit-card fee on DMV transactions; verified on mwg.aaa.com, November 6, 2026)
• Superior Driving School of Madera — superiordrivingschoolmadera.com (1516 Howard Rd; 1-559-673-4060; hours; car-for-test rules) and Aasaan Driving School — aasaandrivingschoolca.com (286 Solano St; +1 408-890-8122; wrong “1280 Country Club Drive” address and “specific test routes” claim logged); Coastline Academy — Driving Lessons in Madera (home pickup); Drivers Ed Direct — Madera Driver’s Ed (online course)
• countyoffice.org — Madera DMV Office page (correct address and hours; bogus +1-332-244-414 phone logged; Merced 33.8 mi and Mariposa 38.1 mi corroborate the computed straight-line distances) and Reedley + Los Banos pages (stale and wrong data logged)
• dmvchangeofaddress.com — locator and guide pages (wrong “41 field offices,” wrong “no walk-ins,” wrong Los Banos address, phone, and hours — all logged)
• GJEL — Map of California DMV Offices (May 2020; stale Reedley address logged); driving-tests.org — CA DMV office locations (stale Reedley address logged); xtreet.com — aggregator pages for Merced, Clovis, Tulare, Reedley, Los Banos, and Corte Madera (no Madera page surfaced; Reedley old address logged)
• dmvcalifornia.us/dmv-offices/madera/ — 404 (no Madera office page; checked November 6, 2026)
• californiadmvappointment.us/dmv-offices/madera/ — 404 at brief and build time (dedupe passed, November 6, 2026)
• Site’s own November 4, 2026 live Service Advisor verification — Get in Line hours (Mon–Fri 7:50–4:00; Wed 8:50–4:00)
• Research brief: ~/workspace/dmv-research/hidden_files/deep-dmv-offices-madera.md (13,264 words, November 6, 2026)

Last verified against dmv.ca.gov: November 6, 2026. Statutes, forms, and fees change — confirm current rules and the current fee schedule on dmv.ca.gov before your visit.