Ultra-soft Temple Sweatshirt

Location
Pocatello, Idaho. The temple sits on a 10.94-acre site high on the city's eastern foothills, at 4,989 feet, where it can be seen for miles. It looks west toward the Snake River Plain.

Temple Number
The Church's 170th operating temple at its dedication, and Idaho's sixth.

Announced
April 2, 2017, by President Thomas S. Monson in general conference, one of five temples he announced that day.

Groundbreaking
March 16, 2019. Elder Wilford W. Andersen of the Seventy, president of the Idaho Area, presided and offered the dedicatory prayer. Idaho Governor Brad Little and Pocatello native Taysom Hill, then playing in the NFL, were among those who turned soil.

Dedicated
November 7, 2021, by President M. Russell Ballard, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in three sessions. The public open house ran September 18 to October 23, 2021, and more than 250,000 people came through.

Architecture
FFKR Architects of Salt Lake City, with Church architects Scott Bleak and Joshua Stewart; Okland Construction built it. A streamlined classical design patterned after other Latter-day Saint temples and after older buildings in Pocatello. Three stories and 71,125 square feet, clad in a light gray granite called temple white, supplied from Fuzhou, China, and sandblasted to a paler finish. The single central spire reaches 182 feet, and the angel Moroni statue on top brings the total to 194 feet 6 inches.

Ordinance Rooms
Four instruction rooms, four sealing rooms, and one baptistry.

First Temple President
Bruce H. Winegar, 2021–2024, with Karen Finch Winegar as matron.

• On the evening of March 5, 2019, eleven days before the groundbreaking, local leaders asked youth to help clear the site. Organizers planned for about 1,000. More than 2,500 showed up with picks, pruners, and shovels, and the sagebrush was gone in less than an hour.
• Construction started March 18, 2019, two days after the groundbreaking. The gold-leafed angel Moroni was placed atop the spire on March 10, 2021.
• Before the open house, youth planted 25,000 flowers on the grounds.

• The exterior art glass shows two wildflowers of the Idaho mountain desert: the syringa, the state flower, and the bitterroot. Sage stands for the sagebrush. Gold is for the wild grasses that turn gold every summer. Pink and coral are for the sunset, the bitterroot, and Red Hill above town.
• The syringa keeps turning up inside. It is in the corners of the light fixtures and in the decorative panels of the baptismal font railings, next to bitterroot petals. Indian paintbrush joins both flowers in the carpets and the painted ceilings.
• The chapel holds historic art glass, a three-part scene of the Savior with sheep, made by Frank Drehobl and Sons Art Glass in Chicago, salvaged from a Chicago church, and restored by Holdman Studios in Lehi, Utah.
• The main interior stone, luna beige, was quarried in Bethlehem. The celestial and sealing rooms use crema ella marble from Turkey, and the baptismal font is Sahara gold stone from Pakistan.

• The city takes its name from Chief Pocatello, a Shoshone leader. In the 1870s he was among the many Shoshone and Bannock people who traveled to Utah and were baptized into the Church.
• The 2021 open house was the first public look inside a temple in 590 days.
• In 2022, ENR Mountain States named it the year's Best Project in the Cultural/Worship category.
• Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve, who grew up in nearby Tyhee and went to school in Pocatello, came home for the dedication. His verdict: "It's no small temple."