Five roads in Wolfeboro carry a scenic-road designation under RSA 231:157–158, and on those you can’t cut or remove a tree in the town right-of-way that measures 15 inches around at four feet up without prior written consent from the Planning Board, given after a noticed public hearing. Pleasant Valley, Stoneham, Jenness Farm, Pork Hill, and the dirt section of Cotton Valley. If your frontage is on one of them, that’s the first thing we look at. Everywhere else it’s ordinary clearing, plus the Shoreland Act if you’re inside 250 feet of water.
The scenic-road rule trips people up because it’s written in circumference, not diameter. Fifteen inches around is a tree about five inches through. That’s a sapling to anybody who clears land for a living, and it’s protected. The rule only reaches inside the road right-of-way, which on these old roads is usually wider than the gravel you drive on, so the real question is never whether you can clear your lot. You can. It’s where the right-of-way line sits, and whether your new driveway opening crosses it.
The town holds itself to the same standard, which tells you how seriously the board takes it. In February 2025 the Municipal Electric Department sat through a public hearing for routine line maintenance on all five roads: 37 trees to come down on Pleasant Valley, 37 on Pork Hill, and roughly 20,938 feet of aerial trimming on Pleasant Valley alone. An abutter wrote in about two couple-hundred-year-old trees on Stoneham Road, asking them to go easy. The board approved it six to nothing, with the tree warden’s letter in hand and a note in the minutes that the cut would be less aggressive than on a normal town road. That’s the temperature of the conversation. Worth knowing before a machine shows up.
Then there’s the ash. Emerald ash borer was found in Concord in 2013 and it’s in every county now, so on a lot of Wolfeboro woodlots the standing dead is ash — 26 of the 37 trees the Electric Department wanted off Pork Hill were dead ash growing into the wires. Dead ash is nasty work. It goes brittle, the tops snap instead of falling where you put them, and there’s no market for the wood. We take it mechanically wherever a machine can reach, and we’ll tell you if there’s a dead one leaning at your roof that sits outside the line you paid us to clear.
If your frontage is on Pleasant Valley, Stoneham, Jenness Farm, Pork Hill, or the dirt end of Cotton Valley, call the Planning Board before you call us. The hearing isn’t hard to get through, but it meets when it meets, and waiting for an agenda slot can cost you a month of good frozen ground.
We walk it with you first and put paint and ribbon on the ground: house footprint, septic area, driveway, and anything that has to stay. On a road-frontage lot we find the right-of-way line before that, off the deed or the town’s layout, because five feet of guessing there is the difference between a tidy job and a letter from the town. On water we measure back 250 feet and work inside the state’s rules for what comes out of the buffer.
Then the machines. Brush and small stuff gets mulched on site — it’s cheaper than trucking and the chips do some good on a raw lot. Merchantable wood goes out as logs if there’s enough of it to interest a mill, and on a decent Wolfeboro woodlot there often is. Stumps come out and leave; we don’t bury them, because a buried stump is a soft spot in your lawn four years from now and a settled corner under a slab sooner than that. Topsoil gets stripped and piled by itself so it can go back where you want grass.
The finish is a rough grade that sheds water toward somewhere it can go, with silt fence up on any slope that’s pointed at a wetland or a neighbor. Winter is the good season for this work here. Frozen ground means less rutting, the brush is bare so you can see what you’re cutting, and you’re not fighting the summer traffic on 28 and 109 to get equipment across town.
Full clearing in Wolfeboro runs $3,000–$8,000 per acre for wooded ground. Steep, ledgy, or buffer-constrained lots land toward the top; open sapling and brush work is well under it. Dead-ash removal near a house or a line gets priced as its own item because it’s slower and more dangerous than green timber. We walk it and give you one number.
Pleasant Valley Road, Stoneham Road, Jenness Farm Road, Pork Hill Road, and the dirt section of Cotton Valley Road. Under RSA 231:157–158 no tree of at least 15 inches circumference at four feet above the ground may be cut or removed from the right-of-way without prior written Planning Board consent, given after a public hearing. Stone walls get the same protection.
No. It covers trees and stone walls inside the town right-of-way, not the rest of your lot. What it does affect is a new driveway opening, a widened one, or a sight-line cut at the road, since all of those happen in the right-of-way. We locate that line first and tell you honestly whether you need to be on a Planning Board agenda.
Inside 250 feet of Winnipesaukee, Lake Wentworth, Crescent Lake, Rust Pond, or Mirror Lake, the state Shoreland Water Quality Protection Act sets what comes out of the buffer, and the closest 50 feet is the tightest. It’s a scoring system, not a percentage, so it gets measured on site. We flag it before quoting.
Both, and it depends where they stand. Out in the woods, dead ash comes down with the rest of the clearing and costs about the same. Near a house, a drive, or the Electric Department’s wires it’s slower, needs more room to work, and gets quoted separately. Brittle tops don’t fall where you aim them.
Winter, if you can wait. Frozen ground carries machines without rutting, the leaves are off so you can see the lot you’re actually buying, and stumping in frost is no harder than stumping in August. Spring is the worst of it — soft ground, posted roads, and everybody in town wanting site work at once.
Free site walks, test pits before quotes, flat pricing, and a crew that knows Lakes Region ground.
Tell us where the property is and what you’re trying to do. We’ll walk the site, talk it through, and give you a straight, flat quote.
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