The St. George Temple Quarry Hike- How Firm A foundation

 While I await with great anticipation the dedication of the Cedar City Temple,  I honor and will always treasure the St. George Temple.  Rigby and I were sealed for time and for all eternity in this sacred house of the Lord on July 29, 1995.  Both of our parents were married here as well and Rigby's  paternal and maternal grandparents. 

We enjoyed a youth trip to the St. George Temple quarry in mid October.  Brother Lillywhite did a great job as he shared his craftsman ship of cutting stones while sharing  details of how the St. George Temple was built.  Unlike the Cedar City Temple that just "seemed to appear on the hill," the story of the building of the St. George Temple is much different.

Brigham Young arrived in St. George in the winter of 1870.  He was tiring quickly and his health was declining.  It was his desire to see a temple built in the west before his passing.  At this point no work had been done on the Salt Lake temple for 7 years.  The saints needed something to unify them- to cure the restlessness they were feeling. Brigham Young has his heart set on Dixie. In January 1871 he petitioned his brethren for their input in regards to building a temple in St. George.  Erastus Snow exclaimed "Glory! Hallelujah!"  This same sentiment echoed throughout the room. The date was January 31, 1871.

 On November 5, 1871 members of Dixie sustained the decision to build the St. George temple- four days later the groundbreaking for the temple took place. The excavation process of building the St. George temple met with opposition.  While a 1/4 of the temple rested on limestone the rest lay on marshy land.  Volcanic rock was taken  from the nearby black mesa (near the previous airport in St. George) to and was used to sure up the foundation once the marsh was drained.

Imagine what those pioneers did.  First a road had to be built to get the rock, and then wagons had to transport it to the temple site and then drive the rock into the ground into the ground.  The work was long, hard and tedious, but the faith of the saints prevailed.  This process took more than two years- and that was just for the foundation. This process required thousands of tons of small rock. (and this is just the story of the foundation).

Description[edit]

The building is located in the southwestern Utah city of St. George. It was designed by Truman O. Angell and is more similar in its design to the Nauvoo Temple than to later LDS temples. The St. George Temple is the oldest temple still actively used by the LDS Church. The temple currently has three ordinance rooms and 18 sealing rooms, and a total floor area of 110,000 square feet (10,200 m²). It was originally designed with two large assembly halls like the earlier Kirtland and Nauvoo Temples. The lower Assembly Hall was partitioned with curtains to provide the ordinance rooms for the Endowment Ceremony. In 1938, the lower Assembly Hall was rebuilt with permanent walls dividing it into four ordinance rooms. The four ordinance rooms were later changed into the present three rooms, at the time the endowment ceremony was changed from a live presentation to one presented on film.

In the 1970s, the temple was closed for extensive remodeling. LDS Church president Spencer W. Kimball rededicated it in 1975.

Temple construction and dedication[edit]

A temple for St. George was announced on November 9, 1871 by Brigham Young and was dedicated on April 6, 1877. Even though the Salt Lake Temple had been announced and commenced years earlier (1847 and 1853), construction on that temple was not completed until 1893. The St. George Temple was built to satisfy the church's immediate need for an appropriate place for temple ceremonies and ordinances. Because of the pressing need, the building's groundbreaking ceremony was held on the day the temple was announced. It was the third to be completed by the church and the first one in Utah.^[1]

Brigham Young chose a 6-acre (24,000 m²) plot as the temple site. Builders soon discovered that the chosen site was swampy with numerous underground streams. Young was consulted on moving the site, but he remained firm in the idea that this was the site for the temple. To deal with the swampy site, workers created drains to eliminate as much water as possible. Then they brought lava rock to the site and crushed it into a gravel to create a dry foundation for the temple. This led to a new problem: how to crush the rock. Someone suggested using an old cannon^{[nb 1]} that the city had acquired. After creating a pulley system, the cannon was used as a pile driver to compact the lava rock and earth and create a firm foundation.

After stabilizing the foundation, work began on the structure. The walls of the temple were built of the red sandstone common to the area and then plastered for a white finish. Local church members worked for over five and a half years to complete the temple. Historians James Allen and Glen Leonard made note of the dedication shown by the pioneers in Southern Utah. The workers opened new rock quarries, cut, hauled and planed timber, and donated one day in ten as tithing labor. Some members donated half their wages to the temple, while others gave food, clothing and other goods to aid those who were working full-time on the building. Women decorated the hallways with handmade rag carpets and produced fringe for the altars and pulpits from Utah-produced silk. At its completion, it contained 1,000,000 board feet (2,000 m³) of lumber, which had been hand-chopped and hauled between 40 and 80 miles (60 and 100 km). They also used 17,000 tons of volcanic rock and sandstone, hand-cut and hauled by mule teams.

In honor of the temple, the church's April 1877 General Conference was held there. The temple dedication ceremony took place on April 6, 1877. Young presided and Daniel H. Wells, his second counselor, gave the dedicatory prayer. The St. George Temple was the only temple completed while Brigham Young was president. Shortly after the dedication and the conference, Young returned to Salt Lake and died on August 29, 1877, at age 76.

After remodeling of the interior, the temple was rededicated on November 11, 1975.^[2]

Youth from the Ashdown Forest Ward

The Land of Dixie

Love these ladies and what they have taught me

Love these Beehives!

May they have faith in every footstep

I pray they will remember that the trek to the temple is constant.  Their testimonies will require daily doses of volcanic rock to firm up the foundation of their testimonies.