Florida State Road 986

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State Road 986, also known as Sunset Drive and Southwest 72nd Street, is a six-mile-long east-west road serving Kendall and South Miami, Florida. Most of the route is lined with strip malls, particularly the stretch west of SR 973 (Galloway Road) and the segment in the city of South Miami. Currently, its eastern terminus is an intersection with U.S. Route 1 (SR 5, locally known as South Dixie Highway), in downtown South Miami (until 1997, its eastern terminus was three blocks further to the east at Red Road, to intersect with a since-truncated SR 959 on the South Miami-Coral Gables boundary).

While there is no doubt as to the present location of the eastern terminus, motorists trying to find the western end of SR 986 would have great difficulty recognizing it. People approaching Sunset Drive while driving on Southwest 117th Avenue find trailblazer signs indicating that SR 986 extends eastward and westward from that intersection. When they turn to follow "West 986" along Southwest 72d Street, there are no signs from the Florida Department of Transportation indicating that the state route continues west, although Sunset Drive extends an additional 5.5 miles (to Southwest 172d Avenue in western Miami-Dade County); nor is there an "END 986" sign on either end of the route.

Although it can be argued that the western terminus of SR 986 is at the intersection with Southwest 117th Avenue, FDOT maps indicate that the State Road actually ends directly underneath Florida's Turnpike (SR 821), 150 yards to the west, even though there is no direct access between the two state highways.

From the eastern terminus of SR 986, Sunset Drive continues another 1.8 miles to its terminus at Cartagena Plaza (Cartagena Circle), a traffic circle in Coral Gables. The stretch between Red Road and Erwin Road features evidence of a unique disagreement between governmental entities: the overhead and street signs maintained by Miami-Dade County indicate that the road is named Sunset Drive, while the signs maintained by the City of Coral Gables show the road's name as Sunset Road.

In 1996, the Florida State Legislature passed a resolution renaming SR 986 as Marjory Stoneman Douglas Sunset Drive.


Florida State Roads
Preceded by:
985
State Road 986 Succeeded by:
989