Temple Square: Forty Years, One Quarry, One Dedication
Near Salt Lake City, Utah
In eighteen fifty-three, workers drove iron stakes into a plot of ground in the center of Salt Lake City and laid the cornerstone of a temple. They would not see it finished. Most of the men who began the work died before the dedication day.
The Salt Lake Temple took forty years to build. Brigham Young chose the site before the pioneer company had finished setting up camp in the valley; the temple was the purpose around which everything else was organized. The granite came from Little Cottonwood Canyon, twenty miles to the south. In the early years, before the railroad arrived in Utah in eighteen sixty-nine, workers moved the stone by oxcart over a rough road through the desert. When rail reached Salt Lake, the quarrying and hauling accelerated, but the cutting and fitting were done by hand throughout. The temple's six towers rise to the height of roughly two hundred twenty feet. The gilded figure of the angel Moroni was set atop the tallest spire at the dedication.
On April sixth, eighteen ninety-three, the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated. The date was not accidental; April sixth carries doctrinal significance in Latter-day Saint theology as the founding date of the Church. The dedication ceremony was closed to non-members, as temple worship has always been. The surrounding blocks, called Temple Square, were open to the public, and thousands of people gathered outside.
Non-members are still not admitted inside the temple. The surrounding Temple Square was closed for a multi-year renovation beginning in two thousand nineteen, redesigned with new visitor facilities and gardens. It draws more than five million visitors annually. The temple itself, for the majority of people who walk past it, can only be understood from the outside.
