Ultra-soft Oversized Temple Hoodie

Location
Idaho Falls, Idaho. Seven acres on the banks of the Snake River, just above the falls the city is named for, at an elevation of 4,716 feet. Locally it is often called the Temple by the River.

Temple Number
The Church's eighth dedicated temple and the first built in Idaho. It was the first new temple dedicated since Mesa, Arizona, in 1927.

Announced
March 3, 1937, by the First Presidency under President Heber J. Grant, in the middle of the Great Depression.

Groundbreaking
December 19, 1939. Ground was broken by David Smith, president of the North Idaho Falls Stake. President David O. McKay of the First Presidency dedicated the site and presided at the cornerstone ceremony on October 19, 1940.

Dedicated
September 23–25, 1945, by President George Albert Smith, in eight sessions attended by some 23,487 members. The first session was the first general meeting he presided over as President of the Church, and this is the only temple he dedicated.

Rededicated
June 4, 2017, by President Henry B. Eyring, First Counselor in the First Presidency, in three sessions.

Architecture
Lead architect John Fetzer, working with the Church's board of temple architects: Edward O. Anderson, Georgius Y. Cannon, Ramm Hansen, Hyrum C. Pope, and Lorenzo S. Young. Fetzer said he prayed over the design and saw an ancient Nephite temple in vision, which he used as its basis. The style mixes Art Deco with the international style, built around vertical fins and stepped massing. The walls are reinforced concrete, 16 inches thick, faced with two-inch slabs of cast stone made from white quartz aggregate and white cement. A 50-foot spire rises from the center, topped by a 13-foot angel Moroni. 85,624 square feet. Birdwell Finlayson of Pocatello was the original contractor.

Ordinance Rooms
Four progressive ordinance rooms (creation, garden, world, and terrestrial) leading to the celestial room, plus sealing rooms and one baptistry.

First Temple President
David Smith, 1943–1949, the same stake president who broke ground.

• Crews digging the foundation went down 18 feet through sand and hit a bed of lava rock. The temple stands on it.
• At the 1940 cornerstone ceremony, President McKay took off his hat and handed it to six-year-old John Groberg to hold. John's parents, Delbert and Jennie Groberg, had helped the Church acquire the land.
• The exterior was finished by September 1941. Then the war came. Materials were short and many of the able-bodied workers had gone into the armed forces, so the interior took about four more years.
• The dedication finally came about five weeks after World War II ended.

• President Grant asked for a building that was "chaste, simple, symmetrical and well proportioned," without much ornament. The fins and stepping on the exterior are about all the decoration it has.
• The square motif on the exterior precast panels was carried inside during the 2015–2017 renovation. New art glass by Holdman Studios of Lehi, Utah, is derived from it, and Gregg Johnson of Halfmoon Studios carved square patterns into the carpet pile to match.
• The original hand-painted murals survive: significant baptisms in the baptistry, Christ teaching His disciples in the grand hall, and murals in the creation, garden, world, and celestial rooms, where the paintings show eternal families.
• Doors were rebuilt to types first designed for the temple in the 1940s, and the woodwork follows the original millwork profiles. The new font railings are nickel silver, the same metal as the original font surround and oxen.

• 1960: a visitors' center opened on the grounds. It has since been remodeled and is still open to the public.
• September 5, 1983: a gold-leafed angel Moroni was lifted onto the spire. No temple had ever received one after its dedication before.
• 2011: the flowerbeds on the east side gave way to a waterfall feature, with new plazas and a bridal courtyard on the south.
• March 16, 2015: closed for two years of seismic strengthening and new mechanical and electrical systems. Conservators cleaned and restored the murals, and the Moroni statue came down briefly for fresh gold leaf. Naylor Wentworth Lund Architects designed the renovation and Okland Construction built it.
• 2017: more than 250,000 people toured the open house from April 22 to May 20. The night before the rededication, about 12,000 youth performed a cultural celebration at Holt Arena in Pocatello.

• The first Latter-day Saint temple built with a single spire above the center of the building.
• When it opened, the district reached more than 90,000 members in 21 stakes across Idaho and Wyoming, and took in parts of Yellowstone National Park.
• Henry B. Eyring and his wife, Kathleen, were at this temple for a wedding on June 5, 1976, when word came that the Teton Dam had failed. Police would not let them drive home to their children in Rexburg, so they spent the night in an Idaho Falls motel. Forty-one years later he rededicated the building.
• Remember the boy holding President McKay's hat? He became Elder John H. Groberg, a General Authority Seventy, and in 2005 came back to Idaho Falls as president of the temple. His father, Delbert, had held the same job from 1975 to 1980.