Essential Temple Tee (St. George)

Location
St. George, Utah. The temple stands at 250 East 400 South on a 6.5-acre site near the city's historic district, a white landmark among the red sandstone buttes of southern Utah.

Temple Number
First among the Church's operating temples. It is the oldest operating temple of the Church and the first temple dedicated in Utah.

Announced
January 31, 1871, by Brigham Young in a meeting with the St. George Stake high council and other local leaders, the first temple proposed since the exodus from Nauvoo. Erastus Snow answered the news with a shout of "Glory, hallelujah!"

Groundbreaking
November 9, 1871. Brigham Young dedicated the site, and excavation began the same day.

Dedicated
April 6 to 8, 1877, with the dedicatory prayer offered by President Daniel H. Wells of the First Presidency in the opening session of general conference, held in the temple; Brigham Young presided and, despite failing health, offered brief remarks. Portions were dedicated January 1, 1877: the baptistry by Wilford Woodruff, an assembly room by Erastus Snow, and a sealing room by Brigham Young Jr. Baptisms for the dead began January 9 and endowments January 11, 1877.

Rededicated
November 11 to 12, 1975, by President Spencer W. Kimball following a major expansion, and again on December 10, 2023, by President Jeffrey R. Holland, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in two sessions.

Architecture
Truman O. Angell, architect, appointed by Brigham Young. Native red sandstone quarried north of the city and plastered white, rising 175 feet, with 143,969 square feet of floor area following the 2019 to 2023 renovation.

Ordinance Rooms
Three instruction rooms with a separate veil room, seventeen sealing rooms, and a baptistry whose font bowl and oxen are the originals from 1877.

First Temple President
Wilford Woodruff, later President of the Church. Under Brigham Young's direction, he and others made the first written record of temple ordinances that had previously been passed on by word of mouth.

• Early Saints packed the site with volcanic rock, using a cannon as a pile driver to compact the foundation.
• The temple was built by local craftsmen from local materials. Stone and lime for plaster came from nearby quarries, timber came from Mount Trumbull, Arizona, which required building a new road, and window glass and metal for nails and the roof came from Salt Lake City.
• Brigham Young personally paid for the baptismal font. Cast in six pieces at the Davis and Howe foundry in Salt Lake City, it traveled by rail to Nephi and then by ox team through the summer heat. A freighter recalled that Orson Hyde, seeing the font in place, "came out weeping with joy."
• Members of the Paiute tribes, on whose historic homeland St. George sits, participated in the construction and in early ordinance work.
• A few construction workers left signatures and time capsules in the walls; one contained original poetry they had written. St. George had roughly 1,100 residents when the work began.

• The temple has been renovated more than 10 times since 1877.
• Lightning damaged the original tower in August 1878. A taller replacement designed by architect William H. Folsom was completed in 1883, and in 1994 the wooden tower was replaced with one of fiberglass and metal.
• A 1917 project enlarged the annex, and a 1938 remodel moved the endowment rooms from the basement to the main level, replacing a large assembly room with smaller mural rooms. Architects Don Carlos Young and Ramm Hansen designed both.
• A 1975 renovation by Church architect Emil Fetzer nearly doubled the temple's 56,062 square feet, added sealing rooms, and replaced the live-acted endowment with the film presentation. President Spencer W. Kimball rededicated the temple that November.
• The temple closed November 4, 2019, for a four-year renovation: exterior walls reinforced with a two-inch layer of gunite and steel, all mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems replaced, north and west additions rebuilt to match the original architecture, a bride's exit and an independent baptistry entrance added, and interior finishes returned to 19th-century design patterns.

• Brigham Young's plan closely followed Joseph Smith's designs for the Nauvoo Temple, carrying that earlier pattern across generations.
• The red sandstone walls are plastered white, setting the temple apart from the surrounding red rock country.
• The exterior pairs an octagonal tower and domed cupola with rows of arched and circular windows and white Tuscan columns.
• The 2019 to 2023 renovation restored the interior to its 1870s and 1880s design period, with new murals by local artists and decorative fixtures matched to designs from a World's Fair catalog.

• It is the only temple completed during Brigham Young's presidency.
• It was the first temple where the endowment was performed by proxy for the dead. Wilford Woodruff recorded almost 25,000 baptisms for the dead, 12,000 endowments, and 3,800 sealings in the first year alone.
• A stretch of road between Arizona settlements and St. George was nicknamed "the Honeymoon Trail" because so many couples traveled it to be married in the temple.
• Almost 670,000 visitors toured the temple during its fall 2023 open house.