Mendocino County, CA Fence Regulations: Height Limits (2026)

152-A in Sec. 020(A) of the Mendocino County Code sets the height ceiling for "view-obscuring" fences, walls, and hedges, meaning board fences, picket fences, and similar solid screening. In a required front yard the limit is 3½ feet. In every other location on the lot, apart from the clear-visibility area at an intersection of streets, alleys, or driveways, the limit rises to eight feet, and a footnote to the table requires a building permit for any fence over seven feet. At intersections, the code does not print a flat number; it instead directs applicants to the Department of Transportation for the required dimensions of the clear-visibility area, since sight-distance triangles vary with the specific intersection geometry.

A separate rule in Sec. 020(A)(2) exempts non-view-obscuring fencing entirely from these height and location limits: chicken wire, hog wire, and other loose-meshed wire fencing used to contain animals qualifies as long as it allows at least 90 percent of light to pass through. Height itself is measured under Sec. 010(B)(2) as the vertical distance from finished grade at the base of the fence to its top edge, and where a fence tops a retaining wall, the height is measured from the base of the wall rather than the top, except that the measurement is always taken from whichever side faces the public right-of-way or the neighboring parcel.