Greenlaw Pond is a shallow northern thing, broad enough to have a name but not deep enough to hide much. The old Maine fish survey calls it 109 acres and six feet at the deepest, with a soft mud bottom, boggy edges, and water that runs nearly the same temperature from top to bottom. Warm in hot weather. Too warm for trout except where the inlets bring their little seams of cold. The pond has brook trout, yellow perch, eel, suckers, minnows; not a glamorous fish list, more like a ledger from a wet room where everything competes for food and space. Sphagnum mood. Mud smell. Northern evening light staying up late over water that is mostly surface. The place around it is the stronger signal. T12 R7 and T12 R8 WELS, Aroostook County: survey-grid names instead of town names. Greenlaw Crossing seven kilometers away. Private timberland, logging roads, fee/checkpoint logic, human sound as an event rather than a background. There are almost no reviews, no useful videos, no recent eBird checklists close enough to pretend at testimony. Even that silence has shape. The USGS keeps a monitoring site on Greenlaw Stream at the inlet, but the internet has not made the pond into a destination. Government watches the water. The last person to write the pond down was a fisheries biologist in 1963. The birds go largely unreported. Greenlaw feels less like a lake to visit than a water-dark pause inside working forest, where the road dust matters, the spare tire matters, and the cool inlet is the whole summer story.
curator · lake-level · as of Sep 3, 2026
The facts
- Surface area 0.3 km² usgs-3dhp · lake-level · as of Jun 2, 2026
- Nearest town Greenlaw Crossing · 8.2 km osm-overpass · lake-level · as of Jun 2, 2026
- Bird species (within 25 mi) 74 ebird-api-v2 · lake-level · as of Jun 2, 2026
- Bird diversity index 0.89 ebird-api-v2 · lake-level · as of Jun 2, 2026
- Median home value $182,300 census-acs-2024-b25077 · block-group-level · as of Jun 2, 2026
- Water clarity Moderate sentinel-2-l2a · lake-level · as of Sep 3, 2026
- Night sky Darkest skies viirs-black-marble-vnp46a4 · lake-level · as of Sep 3, 2026
- Surroundings Rural — open country, few close neighbors curator · lake-level · as of Sep 3, 2026
- Water origin Natural lake curator · lake-level · as of Sep 3, 2026
In more detail
- Climate
- strongly four-season; frigid winters (~14°F mean), mild summers (~64°F); ~39 in precip/yr curator · lake-level · as of Sep 3, 2026
- Public access
- Legal public access by statute rather than developed facility: Greenlaw Pond is a 109-acre natural pond (Maine IF&W lake survey, T12 R7/R8 WELS) and therefore a 'great pond' under 38 M.R.S. §480-B(5), held in public trust with public rights to fish, fowl, and boat; 17 M.R.S. §3860 guarantees foot access across surrounding unimproved land. No developed boat launch exists (absent from the DACF statewide launch inventory) — access is carry-in across commercial timberland, and vehicle approach is via private North Maine Woods road-system gates. Fees/permits: Maine fishing license to fish; North Maine Woods day-use fee may apply for vehicle access. Sources: mainelegislature.org 17 MRS §3860 + 38 MRS §480-B (fetched 2026-07-19); maine.gov/ifw Greenlaw Pond lake survey PDF (109 acres). curator · lake-level · as of Jul 19, 2026
- Property tax
- 1.12% ACS effective-rate proxy (2024 ACS 5-year; Aroostook County anchor: $1,672 median real-estate taxes paid ÷ $149,700 median owner-occupied home value; Maine proxy 1.02%, +0.09 percentage points). census-acs-2024-property-tax · county-level · as of Dec 31, 2024
Where it’s heading
Stable hand-rated for v0.1 · lake-level · as of Sep 3, 2026
Greenlaw Pond sits in unorganized townships inside North Maine Woods commercial timberland, reachable only through gated private logging roads with staffed fee checkpoints, a land regime with no residential development pressure. Maine's most recent fisheries survey of the pond dates to 1963, and the only ongoing monitoring on record is the USGS stream gauge on Greenlaw Stream at the pond's inlet. The 2024 American Community Survey reports a block-group median home value of $182,300, a price level with no trajectory data attached.