About
Who writes this site
Published · every figure below was checked against its primary source on the date shown.
What this is
A map of what it takes to build a house in and around St. Anthony, Idaho, assembled from the documents that govern it: Fremont County's ordinances and permit checklist, the City of St. Anthony's own permit applications, Idaho contractor registration records, and state engineering references.
Most of what is here is public. Almost none of it is collected anywhere a person building a house would find it. The county's carve-out for the St. Anthony city limits is one sentence on one page; the two different code lists sit in two separate documents nobody reads side by side. Putting them together is the entire job.
The sentence that started this site is the county's own, and it is the reason a page like this needed writing at all:
“Fremont County administers the International Building Code requirements in the issuance of all permits, except within the city limits of St. Anthony.”
— Fremont County, official Building page (fremontcountyid.gov/197/Building), retrieved 14 August 2026
Some figures, for scale. Fremont County Ordinance 2005-02 has set this district's ground snow load at 50 PSF since 2005. The county's pre-construction checklist was last revised on 17 April 2026; the city's residential permit application carries revision 11.2023. The University of Idaho's state snow-load reference, published in 2015, gives this town 37 psf at 4,963 feet. Every one of those was read directly on 14 August 2026 rather than taken from a summary.
What I am not
I am not a builder. I hold no contractor registration, I employ no crew, and I will never be on your site with tools. If this page reads as though it is labouring that point, it is deliberate: sites like this one often blur it, and the blur is how people end up thinking they have hired someone.
I do hold an Idaho real estate licence with LPT Realty. That is a separate business. It is disclosed here and wherever else it is relevant, because a credential that can be checked is worth stating plainly and a credential that is hidden is worth worrying about.
How the writing works
- A question gets asked often enough to be worth answering properly.
- The primary document is found and read — not a summary of it, and not a search result about it. Several of the county's forms are scanned images that ordinary tools cannot read at all, which is exactly why what circulates about them is so often wrong.
- The figure is transcribed with its source and the date it was checked.
- If it cannot be verified, it does not go on the page, and the page says why.
That last step is the one that matters. There is a 104-page zoning title on the City of St. Anthony's own website, published under a filename ending “FINAL,” which would supply a great deal of useful detail about setbacks and heights. Every page of it is footed “Draft,” and its section numbering does not match the code the city cites on its current permit form. So none of its figures appear on this site. That is a real cost in content and it is the correct call.
What this site does, and what it refuses to do
| It does | It refuses to |
|---|---|
| Quote the issuing body's own document, with the date it was read | Repeat a figure from a search summary or a competitor's page |
| Name the office that owns the rest of an answer | Guess at a rule it cannot find in writing |
| Say plainly when a source could not be verified | Publish a useful number from an unreliable document |
| List builders from the public record, paid or not | Rank them, or sell a place on the list |
| Disclose the funding model and its bias on its own page | Accept editorial control from any sponsor |
| Point out where a rule's wording is genuinely ambiguous | Resolve that ambiguity on your behalf |
| Print the date every figure was last checked against its source | Leave a stale number on a page without a date beside it |
| Send you to a lawyer, an engineer or a lender when the question is theirs | Offer legal, engineering or lending advice it is not qualified to give |
What I cannot help with
- Legal advice. Ownership of inherited ground, trusts, estates and access rights all come up constantly here. They are lawyers' questions and this site says so every time.
- Engineering. Whether your specific structure needs a stamp is a question for the issuing office and your designer.
- Lending. Whether a bank will finance a particular kind of building is between you and the bank.
- Choosing your builder. I can tell you what the public record shows about each firm. I cannot tell you which one is right for your project, and anyone who claims they can on this little information is guessing.
Why this exists at all
Because a person about to spend several hundred thousand dollars deserves better than a page of averages written for the whole state. The specific facts about this specific town are knowable, they are free, and nobody had collected them.
How the site is funded, and the bias that comes with it, is set out in full on the funding page. Why there are no testimonials here is explained on the reviews page. Both of those are worth two minutes before you trust anything else here.
Common questions
Who writes this site?
Kjel Jones. An independent researcher based in Rexburg, Idaho, who reads primary documents — county ordinances, city permit applications, state studies — and writes down what they actually say about building in St. Anthony.
Are you a builder?
No. No contractor licence, no crew, no trucks, and nothing is built by this site or by the person writing it. The licence, the crew and the work belong to the builders you hire. That distinction is printed on every page for a reason.
What are you licensed as?
Kjel holds an Idaho real estate licence with LPT Realty. That is a separate business from this site and is disclosed wherever it is relevant. It is named here because a credential you can check is worth more than one you are asked to take on trust.
Why should I trust a site written by someone who does not build?
Judge it on whether the sources check out. Every figure names the document it came from and the date it was read, and most of those documents are one click away. Someone who is not bidding on your house has no reason to shade a number.
What are the limits of this site?
It reports what documents say. It does not give legal advice, engineering advice, or lending advice, and it cannot tell you whether a specific builder is right for your project. Where a question needs a professional, the site says so and names which kind.
How do you decide what to write about?
Questions people actually ask, and gaps in what is published. The test is whether an answer exists in a primary document and cannot easily be found anywhere else — the two codebook lists on this site are a good example of both.
Do builders pay you to be listed?
No. Nobody on the builder table has paid anything or been asked for anything, and inclusion is based on appearing in the public record with a St. Anthony address. The funding model is set out in full on its own page.
Do you publish anything you cannot verify?
No, and the site says when that happens. The city's zoning title is the clearest case: the copy published on the city's own site is footed as a draft throughout, so the setback and height figures in it are not reproduced here even though they would make good content.
Ask about a build in St. Anthony
Describe the parcel and roughly what you have in mind. What comes back is an honest read on which firms here take that kind of work, plus the one thing most people have not established yet: whether the city or the county will be reviewing your plans. Free, and nothing automated ever follows.
- Say where the ground is and what you intend to put on it.
- You are pointed toward the firms in this town with that work behind them.
- From there it is between you and them. No commission, no introduction fee, and nobody standing between you and your own contract.
One contact method is plenty — whichever you prefer. A human being writes back.