Ultra-soft Temple Sweatshirt

Location
Montpelier, Idaho, a town of fewer than 3,000 people in the Bear Lake Valley, 10 miles from the Wyoming line and 22 miles north of Utah. The temple sits on 2.6 acres at 534 Washington Street. The Montpelier Tabernacle stands across the street to the west.

Temple Number
The 225th operating temple of the Church, and the eighth dedicated in Idaho.

Announced
April 3, 2022, by President Russell M. Nelson at April general conference, one of 17 temples he named that day.

Groundbreaking
June 17, 2023. Elder Ryan K. Olsen, a General Authority Seventy, broke ground and dedicated the site before a crowd of about 600.

Dedicated
October 18, 2026, by President Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency, in a single session at 10 a.m. that was broadcast to the temple district and rebroadcast that afternoon. It was his 11th temple dedication.

Architecture
Two stories on a structural steel frame, clad in glass fiber reinforced concrete and granite. 34,370 square feet, rising 151 feet 7 inches to the top of a single central tower.

Ordinance Rooms
Two instruction rooms, two sealing rooms, and one baptistry.

First Temple President
Bart O. Christensen, with Cherie Christensen as matron, from 2026.

• Montpelier's old city hall used to stand on this corner. It was torn down in March 2021, more than a year before anyone knew a temple was coming. Several small homes on the property were moved off to make room.
• The Church identified the site less than seven weeks after the announcement, on May 20, 2022.
• That first announcement planned a building of about 27,000 square feet. The one that opened is 34,370. None of the Church's releases explain the difference.
• By the end of 2025, construction had run about 30 months.

• The recurring motif is chicory, a wildflower common around Montpelier, shown in several stages of bloom.
• The palette is gold, blue, green, coral and yellow. It was drawn from local wildflowers and from the turquoise water of Bear Lake, about 15 miles south.
• The art glass keeps to simple linework borders with a bud detail, plus a scene of mountains above a lake. Theodore Ellison Designs of Oakland, California, drew it, and Holdman Studios of Lehi, Utah, built and installed it.
• The floors are breccia aurora light stone bordered in giallo reale, giallo provenza light, rojo alicante and amazonite. Doors are makore wood, and the millwork is sapele with quarter-cut makore veneer.

• Apostle Charles C. Rich led the pioneers who settled the town in 1864. It had been Clover Creek. Brigham Young renamed it after Montpelier, Vermont, the capital of the state where he was born.
• Remember the tabernacle across the street? It was finished in 1917 and seats 1,200, and the ancestors of the local Alleman family, immigrants from Switzerland, helped build it. Its parking lot now doubles as the temple's overflow lot.
• When it was dedicated it became both the easternmost and the southernmost temple in Idaho. Its district takes in more than 15,000 members across Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.
• Two temples were dedicated that Sunday. Elder Ronald A. Rasband dedicated the Managua Nicaragua Temple the same day, and it became the 226th.