Fence Company in Travelers Rest, SC

Anderson Fence Company is a fence company in Travelers Rest, SC, working the sloped and wooded ground at the north end of Greenville County. The city sits at roughly 1,116 feet of elevation, US 276 runs through the middle of it as Main Street on its way toward Caesars Head, and the ground behind most houses either falls off toward a creek or climbs toward a ridge.

Travelers Rest counted 7,788 people in 2020 against 4,570 in 2010. City leaders have pointed out that annexing Furman University and nearby property, roughly 927 acres, accounts for a good share of that increase, so the growth is real but not as steep as the raw numbers suggest. What we see on the ground is three kinds of lot: older in town property near Main Street, newer subdivision builds on the outskirts, and wooded acreage further up the highways.

Stepped or racked, the choice every hillside run makes

There are two honest ways to take a fence down a hill, and they look nothing alike when finished.

• Stepped: each section stays level and the posts drop in increments, which leaves a triangular gap under every panel. This is how panelized vinyl and rigid aluminum have to be built.
• Racked: the rails follow the grade while the pickets stay plumb, so the bottom of the fence hugs the ground with no gaps. This needs a fence built on site board by board, or an aluminum system rated to rack.
• Mixed: on a lot that falls one way and rolls the other, the correct answer is often racked along the side yard and stepped across the back.

Those gaps under a stepped fence are the part people do not picture until the fence is up. On a four foot drop across a back yard they can add up to a surprising amount of open space at ground level. If you have a dog, that matters, and the usual answers are cutting the pickets to follow the grade, adding a treated kicker board along the bottom, or regrading the strip under the run.

1,116 feet of elevationSits under Travelers Rest, with the Blue Ridge escarpment still climbing to the northwest. A genuinely level back yard is the exception here rather than the rule.

Roots, rock and what is under a wooded lot

A mature hardwood sitting on the property line is not an obstacle to be cut through. Severing a structural root of an oak or a poplar can kill the tree or leave it unstable in a storm, and a dead tree on a fence line is a fence repair waiting to happen. Where we can, we shift the post, shorten the span either side of it and keep the root plate intact. Where the tree sits exactly on the line, we say so before quoting rather than after digging.

Rock is the other surprise. Piedmont ground north of Greenville can turn hard a couple of feet down with no warning from the surface. Sometimes the post moves eighteen inches and the spacing absorbs it. Sometimes it means a shorter bay, and sometimes it means drilling. What it should never mean is a post set two feet shallow because the hole got difficult, because that post will lean by the second wet winter.

Deer are part of the calculation on any property backing onto woods here. A four foot garden fence is a step to a deer, not a barrier. Seven to eight feet is the honest height, and where that is not wanted, two shorter fences set a few feet apart work because deer will not jump into a space they cannot judge.

What the Swamp Rabbit Trail does to a back fence

The Swamp Rabbit Trail opened in 2009 and runs roughly 22 miles, connecting downtown Greenville to Travelers Rest. Properties along it do not back onto a neighbor's yard, they back onto a paved public path with steady foot and bike traffic from first light onward. That is a different privacy brief entirely.

In practice it means solid screening at full height on the trail side, hardware chosen so a gate facing the public latches positively rather than drifting open, and a decision made deliberately about whether you want a gate onto the path at all. If you do, check with whoever holds the right of way or the easement before you assume it is yours to cut into. We will build the opening, but the permission is not ours to give.

Travelers Rest is an incorporated city with its own zoning ordinance, so setback and sight line questions go to city hall rather than to Greenville County. South Carolina sets no statewide fence permit and no state height cap, which leaves those decisions entirely local.