Address:
15 East South Temple
Location:
Downtown
Phone:
800-537-9703
Cost:
Adult: Free
Child: Free
Senior: Free
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Overview Inside Tips
Located in the heart of downtown is Temple Square, the center for the Church of Latter Day Saints. Visited by almost 6 million people a year, Temple Square is Utah’s most popular attraction.
The construction of Temple Square began in 1853 and took until 1892 to complete. The pioneers building the magnificent temple spared no effort or expense, using oxen to haul mammoth blocks of granite 15 miles down Big Cotton Canyon and across the valley to the building site. There was no hardwood available until 1863, so these resourceful builders painted wood grain on Tabernacle wall panels and benches by hand to resemble the oak wood they were familiar with from their days in New England.
In 1893, the interior of the temple was completed, with polished granite blocks the workers shaped with hand drills and hammers. Horses hauled the blocks of granite by wagon into the valley until a railroad line was laid into Little Cottonwood Canyon (southeast of Salt Lake City) where the quarry was.
It cost $3.5 million to build this temple, with foundation walls 16 feet thick and 16 feet deep. Walls rising from the foundation are nine feet thick at the base, tapering to six feet thick at the top. Atop the temple’s highest spire, at 210 feet, is a 12 ˝ foot statue of Angel Moroni made of hammered copper thickly overlaid with gold leaf.
The Tabernacle stands just west of the temple, and took 12 years to complete. It is said that Brigham Young gave the Tabernacle its unusual design after contemplating a hollowed-out egg shell cracked lengthwise. He employed bridge building techniques of those days to create a Tabernacle roof that was self-supporting, with no pillars or posts to obstruct audience views. Steam was used to create a domed roof, bending the massive beams that were then weighted at both ends.
Red sandstone quarried from Red Butte Canyon was used for the Tabernacle’s 46 supporting piers, and nearly 1.5 million feet of lumber was hauled from the Wasatch Mountains to complete the project. The 11,000-pipe Tabernacle Organ features prominent golden pipes made of round wood staves, hand-carved from Utah timber. Ten pipes from the original organ still work.
Today, nearly 6 million people visit Temple Square each year. It is the biggest attraction in Salt Lake City and one of the major tour sites of the West. Tours of Temple Square feature a demonstration of the Tabernacle’s remarkable acoustics, and visitors will see why the Grammy-award winning Mormon Tabernacle Choir calls it home.
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