Most of the work booked under the name Splendora is not inside Splendora.
The city is small — a couple of square miles where FM 2090 meets US 59 / I-69, incorporated in December 1966, six miles up the highway from New Caney and twenty-two from Conroe. Splendora ISD covers about 77 square miles and reaches out to Patton Village, Deerwood and the edge of Cleveland. When somebody says they are in Splendora, they usually mean the district, the ZIP or the mailbox. The dirt underneath is almost always unincorporated Montgomery County.
Which of those two answers applies to your parcel decides who issues a permit, so we settle it first.
What makes land in Splendora different
Peach Creek shapes this side of town. It runs past Splendora toward the East Fork system, it carries a gauge here that people upstream and down both watch, and it has put water across ground near town within living memory. Tracts backing to it sit low, stay soft, and hit mapped flood zones in stretches. That rarely stops a clearing job. It changes what you can do with dirt afterward.
This was cut-over timber country and still behaves like it. The town began as a railroad switch serving the pine trade, and the stands around it have been worked more than once. A tract that last saw a harvest fifteen or twenty years ago gives you an even-aged thicket of regrowth, hidden stumps from the previous cut, and old skid ruts under the brush. A machine finds those the hard way if nobody walks the ground first.
Yaupon holly is the understory and it does not respect a mower — cut the stem and it returns off the root crown, denser than before. Down in the bottoms you also get Chinese tallow, the worst resprouter in this part of the state. Leave tallow roots alive and you have bought a second job.
Boundaries out here are frequently a live question. East county acreage has passed through families for generations, often with no recorded plat. Fences here are historical, not legal. We clear to the surveyed line, and if the fence disagrees we would rather find that out standing on the property.
Highway frontage and back acreage are two different products. A commercial parcel on the feeder along US 59 / I-69 is a grading and drainage job with truck traffic beside it and a detention question attached. A back tract off 2090 or a county road behind it is a timber and access job. Same ZIP, same soil, and almost nothing else in common — so a number quoted for one tells you very little about the other.
City or county — the Splendora question
Splendora is incorporated and runs its own code, so an address inside the limits is a different conversation. The limits are small. Most acreage in the district is outside them.
On unincorporated ground Montgomery County is the whole story, with no zoning and no tree ordinance anywhere in it. The permits that do exist are narrow: a development permit for a structure or a manufactured home, septic through Environmental Health, floodplain approval before dirt moves inside a mapped 100-year zone, a 911 number, and a culvert through your precinct. Detail sits on the Montgomery County page.
Burning is the thing people out here assume is free. A ban is an order of Commissioners Court; the Fire Marshal’s office cites you for breaking it. Separately, with no ban at all, Texas rules shut down household refuse burning on unincorporated ground two different ways — a tract smaller than five acres, or ground in a platted subdivision or touching one within 300 feet. Only one has to be true. It is a Class C misdemeanor either way, and with subdivisions scattered along 2090 it catches more parcels than the map suggests.
North of the county line none of that is your answer. Cleveland sits in Liberty County, with its own commissioners, ban and permit office, even though the school district reaches that way.
What we do in Splendora
Land clearing — homesites, pasture conversion, whole-tract work.
Forestry mulching — right tool on regrowth and yaupon, and it keeps working during a ban.
Site prep and grading — house, shop and barndominium pads.
Dirt work — shaping ground that drains nowhere on its own.
Excavation — trenching long rural service runs, cut and fill, swales.
Driveways and culverts — the apron and pipe for a drive off a county road.
Stump grinding — pine stumps run to real numbers on cut-over ground.
Demolition — mobile homes, sheds, barns and slabs on land that just changed hands.
Five things to pull before you clear a Splendora tract
| What to check | Where it comes from | Why it changes the job |
|---|---|---|
| Whether the parcel is in the city limits | City of Splendora, plus the appraisal district parcel map | Decides whether a municipal permit exists at all |
| Recorded plat, or metes and bounds only | Montgomery County Clerk’s real property records | Unrecorded splits are common here. The fence is not evidence of the line |
| Mapped flood zone | FEMA map first, then the county permit office | Digging, grading and filling in a mapped zone are permitted work |
| Any existing OSSF record | Montgomery County Environmental Health | An undocumented old drain field decides where the pad cannot go |
| Easements and buried line | Recorded easements, then a Texas811 ticket | The locate belongs to whoever excavates, and this corridor carries more pipe than the brush suggests |
Common questions
My mail says Splendora. Am I in the city? Probably not. The 77372 mail area and the school district both cover far more ground than the corporate limits do. Send the address and we will establish which side of the line you are on before quoting.
Does the school district boundary matter for permits? Not at all. A district boundary governs enrollment. It has no bearing on clearing, burning, septic or floodplain, and it is the most common reason people here call the wrong office first.
Peach Creek runs behind my place. Can you still clear it? Usually. Taking vegetation off is the simpler case. Raising a pad, cutting a swale or hauling in fill is the harder one, because inside a mapped floodplain that work is conditioned — filling a low lot pushes water onto whoever is beside you.
It is rural. Can I burn the pile? Check twice. A ban ends it outright, and with no ban the under-five-acres rule and the 300-foot subdivision rule each stand alone. Mulching avoids the question, which is why most tracts here end up mulched.
Nearby areas we serve
Splendora · Patton Village · Woodbranch · Roman Forest · Deerwood · Plum Grove · Cleveland · New Caney · Porter · Grangerland · Cut and Shoot · Conroe
Two questions set the shape of a Splendora job before acreage is counted: whether your parcel answers to the city or only to the county, and whether the low end of it sits in a mapped zone that turns dirt work into permitted work. Sort those and the rest follows from how this work gets priced.
Or start your free quote right here: