St. George Utah Temple, The First

The white tower rising above the red-rock bluffs is the St. George Utah Temple, and it carries a distinction that still matters to every Latter-day Saint in the world: it is the oldest temple still in active use by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Brigham Young announced the temple in January of eighteen seventy-one, and ground was broken later that year, on November ninth. Young had been wintering in St. George for his health, and he wanted a temple here in the warmer south rather than waiting for the grander Salt Lake Temple, which was still decades from completion. Saint George was a small community and could not have built something this ambitious on its own. Workers and supplies came from across Utah: food donations arrived from Sanpete County, two hundred forty miles away; cash contributions came from congregations throughout the church.

The site presented an immediate engineering problem: the ground was swampy. Pioneer builders solved it by packing the foundation with volcanic rock and using a cannon as a pile driver to compact the soil, hammering the stones deep enough to support a substantial structure.

The temple was dedicated on April sixth, eighteen seventy-seven, with ceremonies led by President Daniel H. Wells. At that dedication, for the first time in the Utah territory, members could perform the full set of temple ordinances, including proxy work on behalf of the deceased. It was, for the church, a generation of waiting finally answered.

Just four months after the dedication, on August twenty-ninth, eighteen seventy-seven, Brigham Young died in Salt Lake City. The St. George Temple was the only one completed during his thirty-year presidency, and it stands as the lasting monument to the pioneer era of the faith.