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Why Ohio
A revelation in December 1830 told the Church to "assemble together at the Ohio." It was the first commandment to gather. Late that year Oliver Cowdery and Parley P. Pratt had baptized many members of Sidney Rigdon's congregations near Kirtland.

Headquarters
Kirtland was the Church's headquarters through most of the 1830s, while Joseph Smith and his family lived in Ohio. Dozens of the revelations now in the Doctrine and Covenants were received here.

The Last Company
A group of 515 Saints known as the Kirtland Camp left on July 6, 1838, and reached Adam-ondi-Ahman, Missouri, on October 4.

The Temple Since
A court recognized Joseph Smith's heirs as owners in 1880. About twenty years later the RLDS Church, now Community of Christ, secured title, and it cared for the building until March 5, 2024, when it transferred the temple to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Free public tours started on March 25 that year.

• Early February 1831: Joseph and Emma Smith arrived at Newel K. Whitney's store, and the Whitneys took them in for about four weeks. On February 4, in that house, Joseph received the revelation calling Edward Partridge as bishop.
• January 24, 1833: The School of the Prophets first met in an upstairs room of the Whitney store. It ran until about April. Joseph had asked the Lord about the men using tobacco in those meetings, and the Word of Wisdom came on February 27.
• July 23, 1833: Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams presided as the temple cornerstone was laid. The Saints spent about three years on the building.
• February 14, 1835: At a meeting honoring the men of Zion's Camp, the Three Witnesses chose the first Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Eight of the twelve had marched with the camp.
• March 27, 1836: About a thousand Saints packed the temple for its dedication, with more crowding the doors. Joseph Smith offered a prayer he had received by revelation, now Doctrine and Covenants 109. At a meeting in the temple that evening men spoke in tongues, and Saints outside said they saw a bright cloud and a pillar of fire resting over the building.
• April 3, 1836: Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery lowered the canvas curtains around the top pulpit and knelt to pray. The visions that followed, of the Savior, Moses, Elias and Elijah, are recorded in section 110.
• January 12, 1838: Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon left for Missouri. The Kirtland Safety Society, set up in November 1836, had stopped operating by August 1837 in the Panic of 1837, and some investors, Church leaders among them, had begun to doubt Joseph's prophetic calling.

1. The Whitney store was built in 1826 by Newel K. Whitney and Sidney Gilbert. Over the years it was a post office, the bishop's storehouse and the Church's early headquarters, and Joseph Smith finished his Bible translation there in July 1833. The Whitney home, a few steps away, is the house where Joseph and Emma stayed when they first arrived. Next to it is the Johnson Inn, the first brick building in Kirtland. The Church bought it in 1833, and that December Joseph Smith ordained his father there as patriarch to the Church. It burned in 1915 and was rebuilt on the same spot. Down by the Chagrin River, millwright Joel H. Johnson built the sawmill in six months to cut lumber for the temple, from logs floated down the river. Bishop Whitney's ashery, beside it, turned wood ash into potash for shipping east on the Erie Canal. Both have been rebuilt on their original foundations.
2. The Isaac and Lucy Morley farm is on Chillicothe Road. Morley had a small house built there for Joseph and Emma, and they lived in it from March to September 1831. Joseph received as many as 13 of the revelations now in the Doctrine and Covenants on the farm, and in its little schoolhouse 23 men, Joseph among them, were ordained high priests. The house standing there now came later and the Smiths' house is gone, so the marker shows the part of the old farm that's open to the public, not the spot where they lived.
3. The Kirtland Temple is on Chillicothe Road. A short walk up the road is the Joseph and Emma Smith Home. They moved in late in 1833 and stayed just over four years, longer than in any other home they shared. Joseph translated much of the Book of Abraham there, and Emma put together a book of hymns. Kirtland North Cemetery, next to the temple, is older than the Saints' arrival. Joseph's grandmother and Oliver Cowdery's parents are buried in it.
4. The Stannard Quarry, now part of the Chapin Forest Reservation, supplied stone for the temple's walls. Workmen split the blocks out by hand, drilling holes in the rock and driving in wedges, and for a short time Joseph Smith oversaw the quarrying. Some of the old drill holes are still there by the quarry pond.

• Children gathered broken crockery and china to mix into the exterior stucco. The story that Saints smashed their good dishes for it has no known historical account behind it.
• The dedicatory prayer, the Hosanna Shout and the W. W. Phelps hymn sung that day all became regular parts of temple dedications afterward.
• Sidney Rigdon opened the dedication with a sermon that ran more than two hours.