Bishop DMV Office: Hours, Services & Appointment Guide

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

Bishop is the largest city in Inyo County — 3,819 people at the 2020 census, down from 3,879 in 2010, at an elevation of 4,150 feet in the northern Owens Valley — and its DMV office is the county’s only one: the two-day-a-week, full-service office that serves the whole county of 19,016 people across 10,192 square miles, the second-largest county in California. 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. Nine other Inyo County towns were checked on dmv.ca.gov on November 7, 2026, and every one of their field-office pages returns a 404: Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine, Tecopa, Shoshone, Death Valley Junction, Keeler, Darwin, and Olancha. The county has just one incorporated city — Bishop — plus the unincorporated communities, and all of them funnel their DMV business through 1115 West Line Street. This is the Sonora pattern, and the opposite of Indio: there, nine offices share one county; here, one office carries a whole county, two days a week.

Bishop’s claim to the office is older than the office itself, and the town is bigger than its population suggests. Bishop is the only incorporated city in Inyo County, and it is the largest town on US 395 between Victorville and Minden/Gardnerville, Nevada — a stretch of almost 400 miles with no larger town on the highway — 278 miles north of Los Angeles and 200 miles south of Reno, according to the Bishop Chamber of Commerce. The city was incorporated on May 6, 1903, covers about 1.9 square miles, and sits between the two tallest mountain ranges in California, the Sierra Nevada to the west and the White Mountains to the east, with peaks to 14,000 feet a few miles away in either direction. The built-up area around Bishop — the city plus West Bishop, Dixon Lane-Meadow Creek, and the Bishop Paiute Reservation — holds more than 14,500 people, and on a busy day the city attracts more than 30,000 visitors for events and recreation. It is the commercial and population hub of the whole Eastern Sierra, and its DMV office is the only DMV counter for the entire region between Lancaster and Reno that is not in a Nevada office — and a Nevada office cannot do California DMV business.

One correction belongs at the top of this page, because the obvious assumption is wrong: Bishop is not the county seat. The county seat of Inyo County is Independence, a town of 669 people (2010 census) about 40.3 miles south of Bishop in a straight line on US 395 — and Independence has no DMV office at all. Its field-office page returns a 404, like every other Inyo County town except Bishop. So the county’s seat of government has no DMV, and the county’s largest city has the only one. That is the Grass Valley pattern — the county seat without an office, the largest city with one — and the page must never call Bishop the county seat. The second local fact that proves this page was researched in Bishop is the 2024 hours change that no longer applies: on June 3, 2024, the DMV announced that Bishop would move to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday hours from July 1, 2024, as one of 20 offices moved to two-to-three-day weeks. That schedule is now stale. The live official calendar for November 1–14, 2026 shows Tuesday and Thursday only, and the per-office reference agrees (verified July 24, 2026, closure status checked October 31, 2026). Somewhere between July 2024 and July 2026 the days changed, and the press release was never updated. This page follows the live calendar, not the press release.

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 is printed on any office page in this track. What is printed is what was verified on dmv.ca.gov on November 7, 2026, corroborated by a second source wherever a fact carries weight, and labelled when it could not be.

2Address — West Line Street, and the three wrong hours to ignore

The Bishop DMV office is at 1115 West Line Street, Bishop, CA 93514. The address is confirmed three ways: the DMV’s own Bishop field-office page, the DMV’s place data (coordinates 37.361609, −118.411663), and the DMV’s structured office data, which gives the same street, city, and ZIP. The office sits on State Route 168 — West Line Street is SR 168 through Bishop — which runs west from US 395 toward Lake Sabrina and South Lake. US 6, the highway to Tonopah, Nevada, ends at Bishop, and US 395 is the town’s north–south spine. The Bishop Visitor Bureau notes that there is ample parking near the DMV, and that the DMV building is adjacent to the administrative offices of the Bureau of Land Management’s Bishop Field Office and the Inyo National Forest — three federal and state offices in one block, which is why the parking note is worth repeating with its attribution.

The wrong information about this office is not a wrong address — it is wrong hours, and there are three versions of them. The first is the aggregator version: countyoffice.org lists the Bishop DMV as open “Monday: 8:00AM–5:00PM, Tuesday: 8:00AM–5:00PM, Wednesday: 9:00AM–5:00PM, Thursday: 8:00AM–5:00PM, Friday: 8:00AM–5:00PM” — a full five-day week. That is wrong. Bishop is open two days a week. The second is the visitor-bureau version: bishopvisitor.com, the town’s own visitor bureau, says the DMV “is open 8 am – 5 pm on weekdays except for holidays and closed on the weekends.” That is also wrong, and it was updated on June 3, 2024 — the same day as the press release — which means it was written before the current schedule and never corrected. The third is the place-data version: the DMV’s own place data lists Bishop’s hours as “Tuesday: 9:00 AM–5:00 PM, Thursday: 9:00 AM–5:00 PM.” The days are right and the closing time is right, but the opening time is wrong: the official calendar and the DMV’s structured office data both say 8:00 am, not 9:00 am. A reader who trusts the place data arrives an hour late. And the fourth, for completeness, is the 2024 press-release version: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from July 1, 2024. That was true in 2024 and is not true now. The only hours to trust are the ones in section 3, from the live official calendar.

Getting there is straightforward, and the highways matter more here than at any other office in this series. Bishop sits on US 395, the Eastern Sierra’s only north–south highway, with SR 168 running west to the lakes and US 6 running east to Nevada. The office is on West Line Street, which is SR 168, a few blocks west of Main Street (US 395) in the middle of town. There is no second DMV office to confuse it with in the county, and no same-name town to confuse it with in California — the search pollution for Bishop is not another Bishop, it is the stale hours. The practical local fact is the winter one: SR 168 through traffic from Aspendell to Lake Sabrina is closed in winters, and Tioga Pass (SR 120), the only direct road west over the Sierra, is closed in winter too, typically November through late May. US 395 itself is the year-round corridor, but winter storms close it in stretches — check Caltrans before a winter drive to Bishop, and never plan a same-day round trip from the Central Valley in a storm.

3Hours — two days a week, and the Veterans Day week

Bishop keeps the shortest public week of any office in this series: Tuesday and Thursday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, and closed every other day. The office is closed Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 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 7, 2026, and they agree with the DMV’s structured office data and with the full-week table on the per-office reference.

The week of November 9–13, 2026 is the week to plan around, because it is the narrowest week of the year for this office. The office is open Tuesday November 10 and Thursday November 12 only, and Closed Wednesday, November 11 for Veterans Day — every DMV field office in California is closed that day, and the official Bishop calendar shows November 11 as closed (it would be closed on a Wednesday in any case). Monday November 9 and Friday November 13 are closed as usual. So in the week of November 9, Bishop is open two days out of seven, and a reader who misses both days waits until Tuesday November 17. 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 — and with only two open days a week, a 4:30 pm cutoff that wastes a visit is a two-day wait, not a one-day wait.

Two warnings belong in this section because both send readers to closed doors. The first is the “nearby wait times” block on the DMV’s own Bishop page: it lists Reedley, Clovis, Fresno North, Visalia, and Mariposa as the nearby offices — Central Valley offices 84 to 125 miles away in a straight line — and it does not list Ridgecrest or Lake Isabella, the two offices that are actually nearest by road. The DMV’s nearby algorithm is glitchy here, and the list must not be copied as a “nearest offices” list: section 10 has the real table. The second is the Wednesday trap: most California DMV offices open at 9:00 am on Wednesdays, and a reader who assumes Bishop does too will drive to a closed office. Bishop does not open on Wednesdays at all. The 7:00 am Wednesday early opening that about sixty high-volume offices run does not apply to Bishop either: this office opens at 8:00 am on its two days, and only on its two days.

4Services at this office

The DMV’s Bishop page lists eight service groups, and the list is the whole story of what the counter does. The most useful thing about the list is what is missing from it: “Self Service Terminals” is not there. That is how the DMV’s own page tells you there is no kiosk in this building — and the kiosk page for this office returns a 404, which confirms it. That makes Bishop the opposite of the kiosk offices in this series: there is no machine in the lobby to take the renewals and records, so the transactions the counter does not do must go online, by mail, or to a kiosk 84 miles away. The eight 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, two days a week, in the county’s largest city.

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, a CDL test is offered here, which is unusual for a two-day office: the per-office reference lists a CDL test for Bishop, and the DMV’s own Driving Test Sites handbook page lists Bishop among the offices where you call 1-800-777-0133 to make an appointment for a noncommercial Class A or Class B driving test. Book a CDL test by phone, not online. 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 Bishop is no exception — those errands go online, to a kiosk, to a partner, or by mail, and driving to West Line Street for them is a wasted trip. That rule bites harder here than anywhere else in this series, because Bishop has no kiosk and no partner on its official page: the nearest kiosk is 84.2 miles away in a straight line, so a Bishop reader’s realistic options for a renewal are online or by mail. 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 Bishop, and no phone number appears on the official Bishop page at all.

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, two-day 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, and no second day that week to come back. The statewide pattern — early mornings quietest, the first and last week of the month and the first open day after a closure busiest — is a statewide pattern, not a Bishop figure, and no Bishop 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 on the office’s open days — for Bishop, Tuesday and Thursday, 7:50 am to 4:00 pm, the queue opening ten minutes before the office does. 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 Inyo’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 Bishop shows nothing, check Ridgecrest first — 125.1 miles away in a straight line, open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the days Bishop is closed — then Lake Isabella, which keeps Bishop’s own Tuesday and Thursday, before giving up. Offices serve all California residents regardless of home address, so a Bishop reader is not locked to Bishop — and a Lone Pine or Big Pine reader is not locked to Bishop either, though it is the only office in their county.

6Driving tests at Bishop: behind-the-wheel, motorcycle, and written — and the CDL surprise

Bishop offers four test types, and the fourth is the one that surprises readers who assume a two-day office does the minimum. Behind-the-wheel drive tests, motorcycle skills tests, and written knowledge tests are all offered here, and so is a CDL test. 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 CDL test is the exception inside the exception: it is booked by phone at 1-800-777-0133, not through the online system, and the DMV’s Driving Test Sites handbook page names Bishop specifically among the offices where you call to make an appointment for a noncommercial Class A or Class B driving test.

The teen funnel is the reason the drive-test book fills. Bishop Union High School (Bishop High School) and the Jill Kinmont Boothe continuation school are the town’s two high schools, and the county’s other teens — from Lone Pine, Independence, and Big Pine — funnel through this one office too. There is no in-person driving school verified in Bishop: the only verified option is Drivers Ed Direct’s DMV-approved online course, which serves Bishop High School and Jill Kinmont Boothe students and offers simulated permit tests for the day at the Bishop DMV. No brick-and-mortar school was found in town, and no school’s DMV occupational-license number was verified on the DMV lookup at build time, so this guide does not call any school “DMV-licensed” — check the DMV’s own lookup before you pay. 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. One more test-day fact, because it decides whether the trip happens at all: winter. Bishop sits at 4,150 feet, winter days run 30 to 50 degrees with overnight lows in the single digits, and the mountain passes close — so a teen from Big Pine or a CDL applicant from Lone Pine should check Caltrans before a winter test day, and book a morning slot, when the roads are clearest and the office is quietest.

One more test fact, because it decides where commercial drivers go. Bishop is not the only CDL office in the corridor — Ridgecrest and Lake Isabella both list a CDL test too, and so does Lancaster, 185.4 miles away in a straight line — but Fresno North, Fresno (Olive Avenue), and Visalia, the three nearest offices by straight-line distance, are all CDL-no. So the CDL map is the opposite of the distance map: the nearest offices cannot do a CDL test, and the offices that can are the part-week ones on US 395. Do not book a CDL test at Fresno North, Fresno (Olive Avenue), or Visalia, and do not drive to Carson City, Nevada expecting a California CDL test: the Nevada DMV cannot do California business. Book Bishop or Ridgecrest or Lake Isabella by phone, and check the day before you drive — Bishop and Lake Isabella are Tuesday and Thursday, Ridgecrest is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

7REAL ID at Bishop

REAL ID is offered at Bishop. 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, and in a two-day-a-week county a wasted trip is a week’s wait, not a day’s. Since May 7, 2025, a REAL ID or another acceptable federal document has been required to board a domestic flight. The office’s two-day week does 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 — and there is no AAA branch in Bishop to do it either, because the town’s AAA office is permanently closed. Partners do registration services only, and the nearest partner is in Mammoth Lakes. 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 a kiosk — read the notice before you book, and remember that the nearest kiosk is 84.2 miles away in a straight line, so online is the realistic renewal path for a Bishop reader. The DMV’s own REAL ID fee is not stated anywhere on this page, because no fee amount is printed on any office page in this track.

The practical REAL ID advice for a one-office, two-day county is the same as the appointment advice, only sharper: book early, because the same single office serves every first-time REAL ID applicant in a county of 19,016 people, and a rejected document means a second trip to the same office on a later Tuesday or Thursday. 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, Ridgecrest, Lake Isabella, Fresno North, Fresno (Olive Avenue), Visalia, and Lancaster all offer REAL ID — but a REAL ID still needs the counter, not the kiosk, and Ridgecrest is the only one of them open on the days Bishop is closed.

8No kiosk — and how to skip the trip entirely

There is no kiosk in this building, and none is verified anywhere in Inyo County. The DMV’s Bishop page lists eight services and “Self Service Terminals” is not one of them, there is no kiosk banner on the page, and the DMV’s kiosk page for this office returns a 404. The same checks return 404 for Ridgecrest and for Mammoth Lakes. So the kiosk is the most useful thing this office does not have, and the table below is the honest answer to the question every renewal reader asks: where do I go instead. The answer, for a Bishop reader, is online first — because the nearest kiosk is 84.2 miles away in a straight line, and the nearest retail kiosk is farther still.

Three things about this table are worth saying plainly. First, there is no retail or grocery-store kiosk in Bishop, Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine, or Mammoth Lakes: no kiosk of any kind is verified in Inyo or Mono County, and this guide does not invent one. The nearest retail kiosks are all south, in Clovis and Fresno, and the nearest kiosk of any kind is inside the Fresno North office. Second, no DMV partner business is listed on the official Bishop page: the nearby-locations block renders as a map with no partner entries in the fetched page, so this guide names no Bishop partner and lists only the two nearest verified partners, in Mammoth Lakes and Ridgecrest, with their sources flagged. Third, a credit or debit transaction at a kiosk carries a 1.95% service fee, on the DMV’s statewide kiosk terms — and partners charge their own additional fees, so a partner renewal costs more than the same renewal online. The Saturday question is answered by the table, not by the office: the office is closed Saturdays, the partners in Mammoth Lakes and Ridgecrest are closed on Sundays (and Gris Multi Service is closed on weekends entirely), and the only daily options are the grocery-store kiosks in Clovis and Fresno, 237 road miles away. No DMV field office in the county is a Saturday option, because there is only one office and it is closed.

9Inyo County guide: which town, which office

Inyo County has one incorporated city and a string of unincorporated communities down US 395 and out to Death Valley, 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 nine — Bishop, at 1115 West Line Street — and the differences are only in how far the drive is and which road it takes. The county’s seat of government, Independence, is 40.3 miles south of Bishop in a straight line and has no office of its own; Big Pine, the closest town to Bishop, is 14.8 miles south and has no office either; Lone Pine, the gateway to Mount Whitney, is 55.6 miles south and has no office either. The Eastern Sierra Transit Authority’s Route 395 buses run the corridor: the Lone Pine Express runs Lone Pine to Bishop, and the 395 North route runs Lone Pine to Reno with stops in Bishop, so a reader without a car can reach the office by bus from anywhere on the highway — but the bus does not change the office’s two days, and a bus rider who arrives on a Monday finds the same closed office as a driver.

That is nine no-office towns in Inyo County, checked one by one on dmv.ca.gov on November 7, 2026, plus the two Mono County towns that have no office either. The “dmv near me” answer for the whole of Inyo County is this office — Bishop, Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine, Tecopa, Shoshone, Death Valley Junction, Keeler, Darwin, and Olancha all point here, and the next office in any direction is Fresno North, 84.2 miles away in a straight line and 237 road miles away, in another county — or Ridgecrest, 125.1 miles away in a straight line and about 137 road miles away, in another county. And the Mammoth Lakes warning belongs here too: if a search result offers a “Mammoth Lakes DMV,” it is offering a town office at 437 Old Mammoth Road that is not a DMV office, or a partner in a strip mall, and neither can do field-office business. The same goes for Mojave, which has no DMV field office at all — the Kern County “Mojave Mobile Office” is a county-supervisor mobile office, not a DMV office.

10If Bishop is closed or booked: the nearest alternatives

If Bishop is booked, closed for Veterans Day, or closed for the five days a week it is not open, the alternatives are all in other counties, and the table below ranks them by straight-line distance from Bishop. 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 two attributed figures in the notes below. The first three are the nearest by straight-line distance, and the last two are the practical alternates: Ridgecrest and Lake Isabella, the two part-week offices on the same highway.

* Distances are straight-line, computed from the DMV’s place-data coordinates; road distances are longer. The two road figures on this page are single-source and attributed: Bishop to Fresno is 237 road miles (about five hours nonstop), and Bishop to Ridgecrest is about 137 road miles via US 395.

Four lessons hide in this table, and each one saves a wasted drive. The first is the interlock lesson: Bishop (Tuesday/Thursday) and Ridgecrest (Monday/Wednesday/Friday) never share an open day, so between them the US 395 corridor has an open office every weekday — and Lake Isabella keeps Bishop’s own days, so on a Tuesday or Thursday a Bishop reader has two offices open, and on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday the only open office in the corridor is Ridgecrest. The second is the Sierra lesson: the three nearest offices by straight-line distance — Fresno North, Visalia, and Fresno (Olive Avenue) — are all across the Sierra Nevada, and the road to them is 237 miles via US 395 south, CA 14, CA 58, and CA 99, because the direct road west, Tioga Pass, is closed in winter, typically November through late May. Straight-line distance lies here; road distance tells the truth. The third is the CDL lesson: the three nearest offices are all CDL-no, and the CDL offices are the part-week ones on US 395 — Bishop, Lake Isabella, Ridgecrest, and Lancaster. The fourth is the Nevada lesson: Carson City is closer in a straight line than Lancaster, and it is useless — a Nevada DMV cannot do California business, and neither can the Mammoth Lakes town offices or the Mojave county mobile office. The nearest office to Bishop 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 Bishop 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 are busiest, and the first open day after a closure — the Tuesday after a Veterans Day week, for example — is the busiest of all. Book the first appointment of the day if you can, and never book a drive test during a winter storm without checking Caltrans first — US 395 closes in stretches in winter, and a missed test is a missed Tuesday or Thursday, not a missed day. 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 — get the license within 10 days, register the car within 20 — 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. Our out-of-state license transfer guide has the full procedure, and our new-resident deadline calculator works out both dates from your move-in day. Getting there without a car is possible on the Eastern Sierra Transit Authority, the only public transit in the region: the 395 North route runs Lone Pine to Reno seven days a week, once a day; the 395 South route runs Mammoth Lakes to Lancaster; the Lone Pine Express runs Lone Pine to Bishop; the Mammoth Express runs Bishop to Mammoth Lakes four times a day, seven days a week; and Bishop Dial-A-Ride runs Monday to Thursday, 7:00 am to 6:30 pm, according to the transit authority’s 2023 brochure. The Bishop stops are Bishop–Vons, 1190 North Main Street — about a mile in a straight line from the DMV — and Bishop Airport, 703 Airport Road, 2.8 miles away. Fares are $7.00 ($6.00 discounted) from Bishop to Mammoth Lakes and $7.25 ($6.50 discounted) from Lone Pine to Bishop; call (760) 872-1901 extension 2 for reservations on the stops that require them. Bishop Airport itself is 2.8 miles from the office, with the transit authority’s Airport Flyer connecting it to Mammoth Lakes. Check the transit schedule before you travel: the buses run the highway, not the office’s two days, and a bus that arrives on a Monday still finds a closed office.

12Why this office matters: the county’s only office, the interlock, 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 Inyo County and the only DMV counter for the whole Eastern Sierra between Lancaster and Reno that can do California business: 3,819 people in the city and 19,016 in the county, nine no-office towns, one counter. Every permit, first drive test, first REAL ID, CDL test, and title transfer in the county runs through 1115 West Line Street, two days a week, 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 interlock choice for the corridor: Bishop’s Tuesday and Thursday and Ridgecrest’s Monday, Wednesday, and Friday fit together so that the highway always has an open office on a weekday, and the pair is the reason a reader who misses Bishop on a Thursday is not stranded until the next Tuesday. Third, it is the Eastern Sierra gateway: the largest town on US 395 for almost 400 miles in either direction, the hub for the Owens Valley, Death Valley, Mammoth Lakes, and Yosemite’s east gate, with the county’s teen funnel — Bishop High School and Jill Kinmont Boothe, and an online-only drivers-ed course — running through the same two-day 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 “Monday to Friday” hours on the aggregator are wrong: Bishop is open Tuesday and Thursday only. The “weekdays 8–5” hours on the visitor bureau are wrong: same reason, and the page has carried them since June 2024. The “9:00 am” opening on the DMV’s own place data is wrong: the office opens at 8:00 am. The “Monday, Wednesday, Friday” schedule in the 2024 press release is wrong now: it was true in 2024 and the days changed. The “41 field offices” figure is wrong: California has about 170. The “no walk-ins” claim is wrong: walk-ins exist through Get in Line, Tuesday and Thursday, 7:50 am to 4:00 pm. The permit-test question count is not printed anywhere on this site, because question counts are never printed as fact. The “Mammoth Lakes DMV” does not exist: the town offices at 437 Old Mammoth Road are not a DMV office, and the nearest DMV presence in Mammoth Lakes is a registration partner. The “Mojave DMV” does not exist either: the county mobile office is not a DMV office. The “Carson City” option is not an option: Nevada cannot do California business. The “county seat” assumption is wrong: Independence is the seat, and it has no office. And the straight-line distances are not road distances: Fresno North is 84.2 miles away in a straight line and 237 road miles away, and the direct road west is closed in winter. A page that gets the county, the days, the neighbours, the hours, and the isolation 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 — Bishop Field Office (address, hours calendar Nov 1–14, 8 services, payments, nearby wait-times block; closed Wed Nov 11 Veterans Day): dmv.ca.gov/portal/field-office/bishop/
• California DMV — Bishop field-office data (wp-json wp/v2/dmv_field-office/3506: hours Tue/Thu 8:00 am–5:00 pm, all other days Closed; street 1115 West Line Street, Bishop, CA 93514)
• California DMV — Ridgecrest Field Office (540A Perdew Ave; Mon/Wed/Fri calendar; 8 services; Mos Lien Sale Services partner, 211 Sierra Vista St, Mon–Sat 10–6, 1-760-446-1927): dmv.ca.gov/portal/field-office/ridgecrest/
• California DMV — Lake Isabella Field Office (5520 Lake Isabella Blvd; Tue/Thu calendar; 8 services): dmv.ca.gov/portal/field-office/lake-isabella/
• California DMV — press release June 3, 2024, “DMV Announces New Hours for Select Offices” (20 offices to 2–3 days/week from July 1, 2024; Bishop listed Mon/Wed/Fri — STALE, superseded by the live calendar)
• California DMV — “Driving Test Sites” handbook page (Bishop listed among offices to call 1-800-777-0133 for a noncommercial Class A or Class B driving-test appointment)
• California DMV — field-office slug status checks (November 7, 2026): 404 = lone-pine, independence, big-pine, tecopa, shoshone, death-valley-junction, keeler, darwin, olancha, mammoth-lakes, bridgeport, mojave; 200 = ridgecrest, lake-isabella
• California DMV — kiosk page status checks (November 7, 2026): 404 = bishop-field-office, ridgecrest-field-office, mammoth-lakes-field-office
• California DMV — place data, Bishop DMV (coordinates 37.361609, −118.411663; phone +1 800-777-0133; place rating not printed) and Ridgecrest, Fresno North, Fresno (Olive), Visalia, Lancaster, Carson City NV, Mammoth Lakes, Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine (straight-line distances computed from these coordinates)
• dmvca.info — Bishop DMV page (Tue/Thu 8–5; REAL ID, drive, motorcycle, CDL; verified July 24, 2026; closure checked October 31, 2026), Ridgecrest DMV page (Mon/Wed/Fri; verified June 5, 2026), Lake Isabella DMV page (Tue/Thu; verified June 5, 2026), Lancaster DMV page (721 W Ave L6; verified June 5, 2026), Fresno North / Visalia / Fresno pages (compare tables)
• Wikipedia “Bishop, California” (3,819 in 2020; 3,879 in 2010; elevation 4,150 ft; incorporated May 6, 1903; 1.9 sq mi; only incorporated city; county seat is Independence) and “Inyo County, California” (19,016 in 2020; 2025 est. 18,158; county seat Independence; 10,192 sq mi; highest 14,505 ft; lowest −282 ft)
• Wikipedia “U.S. Route 395 in California” (557 mi; SR 168 west = West Line Street; US 6 terminus at Bishop; SR 120 at Lee Vining; SR 168 winter closure) and “California State Route 120” (Tioga Pass winter closure typically Nov–late May; 9,945 ft)
• Caltrans News Flash (SR 120 Tioga Pass: 13-mile stretch, 6,781 ft to 9,945 ft)
• City of Bishop (elevation ~4,100 ft; only incorporated city in Inyo County): cityofbishop.ca.gov
• Bishop Chamber of Commerce FAQ (278 mi north of Los Angeles, 200 mi south of Reno; Tioga Pass closes late Oct on average): bishopchamberofcommerce.com/faq/
• Bishop Visitor Bureau — “Taking Care of Business in Bishop” (1115 W Line St; ample parking; adjacent BLM/Inyo National Forest offices; stale weekday hours logged): bishopvisitor.com
• Eastern Sierra Transit Authority — estransit.com (Lone Pine to Reno 395 North; Mammoth Express schedules and fares; Bishop–Vons and Bishop Airport stops; (760) 872-1901 ext 2) and ESTA Express Routes PDF (Lone Pine Express fares; Bishop Dial-A-Ride Mon–Thu 7:00 am–6:30 pm, 2023 brochure)
• Drivers Ed Direct — Inyo County drivers ed (online DMV-approved course; Bishop High School; Jill Kinmont Boothe): driverseddirect.com
• Inyo Superior Court — traffic division (Bishop 301 W Line St; Independence 168 N Edwards St; (760) 872-3038): inyo.courts.ca.gov/divisions/traffic
• countyoffice.org — Bishop DMV Office page (wrong Mon–Fri hours logged); dmvchangeofaddress.com — locator and guide pages (wrong “41 field offices,” wrong “no walk-ins” — both logged); nextdoordriving.com — Inyo County drivers ed (banned 46/38 question count logged, not printed); easternsierraresources.com — Driver’s License (stale fee figures logged, not printed); trippy.com — Bishop to Fresno distance (237 road miles, single source); distancebetween2.com — Ridgecrest to Bishop distance (136.7 road miles, single source)
• 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-bishop.md (6,991 words, November 7, 2026)
• californiadmvappointment.us/dmv-offices/bishop/ — 404 at brief and build time (dedupe passed, November 7, 2026)

Last verified against dmv.ca.gov: November 7, 2026. Statutes, forms, and fees change — confirm current rules and the current fee schedule on dmv.ca.gov before your visit.