Bulkheads, docks and boathouses on the Montgomery side of Lake Conroe.

The City of Montgomery sits at the junction of TX 105 and FM 149, about 15 miles west of Conroe, near the southwestern edge of Sam Houston National Forest at roughly 300 feet of elevation on a little over five square miles. It is one of the oldest towns in Texas — a trading post in 1826, founded in July 1837, when W. W. Shepperd laid out a townsite on 200 acres he had bought two years earlier, where the Lake Creek Settlement had stood, incorporated in 1848, and the first county seat of Montgomery County. The city also calls itself the birthplace of the Texas Lone Star Flag through Charles B. Stewart, a claim flag historians dispute and one worth repeating as the city's own rather than as settled fact.

None of that is waterfront. The frontage carrying a Montgomery mailing address is the 77356 belt on the west and south shore — Walden's peninsula with its yacht club and two private POA ramps, gated Bentwater with its staffed main entrance, and April Sound on the southern shore with its own marina and covered slips. Most of that belt lies in unincorporated Montgomery County rather than inside city limits, which decides who reviews the land side of a job. It also holds the widest range of budgets on the lake, from million-dollar lakefront down to townhouses and condominiums.

SJRA defines Authority Land as reaching up to a contour line 201 feet above mean sea level, which puts the waterward end of every wall, slip and boathouse on the authority's ground rather than the owner's. Above 201 the land is generally private, but SJRA holds flowage or flood easements around the reservoir perimeter from 201.0 up to 207.0 mean sea level, described by metes and bounds and recorded with the county. On a shallow-sloping west-shore lawn that six-foot band reaches a surprising distance inland.

Then comes the sentence that decides the order of work. The permittee warrants the structure violates no deed restriction or covenant, and that if it does, the permit becomes automatically void without any action on SJRA's part. Nobody has to catch it; nothing has to be revoked. A wall built on a valid-looking permit but against the covenants was never authorized at all.

Bentwater makes the separation explicit: the Architectural Control Committee is created through deed restrictions, and the POA acts as communicator and coordinator for the ACC, an entity independent of the POA. Bentwater also publishes a contractor entry schedule — crews and trucks in after 7 AM, work Monday to Saturday 7 AM to 7 PM from June 1 through September 30 and 7 AM to 6 PM from October 1 through May 31, a 9 AM start on Sundays and six named holidays, and no entry or work at all on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day. The West Entrance, open 6 AM to 10 PM, is the contractor gate, and the owner registers the crew through the POA's online entrance system.

Walden reviews on a fixed cadence: the ACC meets every other Tuesday, submissions are due by noon the preceding Friday, and plans must be approved before work begins. Its restrictions run section by section, so what Walden allows varies by street. April Sound is governed by seven elected trustees managing over 40 acres of common area, a guardhouse and gate, a marina with covered slips and three parks. The land side is county work — a drainage signoff at 500 cubic yards of fill or excavation or a retaining wall 3 feet or higher, floodplain review within 100 feet of the floodplain or floodway, and permits that expire one year from approval. Which body reviews a lot is an address-level question, the same one the buildability check answers elsewhere.