Origin from 1893
On 6 April 1893, forty years to the day after its cornerstone was laid, Church President Wilford Woodruff offered the dedicatory prayer opening the Salt Lake Temple, the culmination of a construction effort that had used granite hauled twenty miles from Little Cottonwood Canyon by wagon before the railroads of the 1870s eased transport. Architect Truman O. Angell's original design, revised for its interior by Woodruff himself, gave way during construction to Joseph Don Carlos Young's completion work, which added steel framing, electric lighting, steam heat and elevators unavailable when Brigham Young laid out the plans. Roughly 70,000 members attended the thirty one dedicatory sessions held twice daily for nearly twenty days, including sessions set aside for children, so that as many of the faithful as possible could witness the building the church now regards as its most significant temple. The completed temple, capped the previous year by its Angel Moroni statue, became the enduring emblem of Latter-day Saint identity in Salt Lake City.
Facts
Dates
StatusEstablished marks this 1893 completion and dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, a distinct architectural and institutional milestone from the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act pressure toward the 1890 Manifesto already recorded here, and earlier than the church's 1955 opening of its first temple in Europe already recorded here. Cross-Tradition Connections
Occurred In
Spread Event Of
Adds a specific, dated event between the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act's pressure toward the 1890 Manifesto and the church's 1955 opening of its first temple in Europe already recorded here: the 1893 dedication of the completed Salt Lake Temple, forty years after its cornerstone was laid, at which President Wilford Woodruff presided over thirty one sessions attended by roughly seventy thousand members.
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