Essential Temple Tee – with personalizable date (Manti)

Location
Manti, Utah. The temple stands at 200 East 510 North on a 27-acre site atop the oolite hill it was quarried from, visible for miles across the Sanpete Valley at an elevation of 5,657 feet.

Temple Number
Third among the Church's operating temples, after St. George and Logan.

Announced
June 25, 1875, by Brigham Young, who selected the hill north of town as the site.

Groundbreaking
April 25, 1877. Brigham Young presided at the site dedication, one of his last public acts before his death that August. Excavation crews began work that October.

Dedicated
May 17, 1888, in a private service where President Wilford Woodruff offered the dedicatory prayer, followed by public sessions May 21 to 23, 1888, at which Lorenzo Snow read the prayer to roughly 5,400 people.

Rededicated
June 14 to 16, 1985, by President Gordon B. Hinckley in nine sessions attended by 19,786, and again on April 21, 2024, by President Russell M. Nelson in a single evening session.

Architecture
William H. Folsom, architect, who also designed the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Castellated design in cream-colored oolite limestone quarried from the hill on which the temple stands, with two octagonal end towers, the taller rising 179 feet, and 74,792 square feet of floor area.

Ordinance Rooms
Four instruction rooms arranged for the progressive presentation, eight sealing rooms, and one baptistry.

First Temple President
Daniel H. Wells, who served from 1888 to 1891.

• The stone came from the building's own foundation. Settlers had carved shelters for their first winter out of the creamy oolite of the hill, and the temple was later cut from the same rock.
• Eleven years passed between the site dedication in 1877 and the dedication in 1888.
• The temple cost $991,991.81. The Sanpete Stake raised $274,815.05 of that total from a farming community of modest means.
• Some of the workmen walked or drove the seven miles from Ephraim, arriving Monday morning and going home Saturday evening, week after week, for years.

• Twin octagonal towers anchor the east and west ends, each enclosing a self-supporting spiral staircase that climbs without a central column.
• The instruction rooms carry hand-painted murals rather than film backdrops. C.C.A. Christensen painted the creation room in the nineteenth century, with erupting volcanoes and dinosaurs among the scenes.
• Minerva Teichert painted the world room, opening at the Tower of Babel and moving through history toward a Zion community, with indigenous figures on the west wall.
• Danquart Weggeland painted the original garden room. After plaster damage in 1944 the room was repainted by Joseph Everett and finished by Robert L. Shepherd, who also painted the baptistry murals in 1946.

• Lightning struck the temple in 1928.
• A renovation completed in 1985 ran four years, and President Gordon B. Hinckley rededicated the building that June.
• The temple closed October 2, 2021, for a renovation that strengthened the foundation, replaced mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, added waterproofing, and built a new entrance and gathering space.
• The First Presidency's March 2021 announcement had planned to remove the murals and move instruction to a single room. That decision was publicly reversed on May 1, 2021, when President Nelson said the pioneer craftsmanship, artwork and character would be preserved, murals included. Art conservators then cleaned and repaired them in place.
• Video projectors were installed in the instruction rooms during the same renovation, ending the live narration the temple had used since 1888 and making the presentation available in more than 80 languages.

• Manti presented the endowment live for 133 years, longer than any other temple.
• Its murals are the only ones in a temple that date from the pioneer period.
• President Nelson's appearance at the 2024 rededication was a surprise. Elder Ronald A. Rasband had been announced to preside, and Nelson's own pioneer ancestors helped settle the Sanpete Valley.