Myths and Realities of the Salt Lake Temple Foundation

Abstract

The foundation of the Salt Lake Temple has been a topic of interest and inspiration since its drawn-out construction from 1853–1864, years of political uncertainty when scant resources were available. Church leaders undertook this large project against the daunting backdrop of working to provide food, shelter, and livelihoods for settlers and the perpetual stream of new immigrants. The builders drew on their own building know-how, as well as the best contemporary sources on architecture and engineering to provide a foundation that would support the Latter-day Saints’ most ambitious building project yet. The problems of building the temple foundation were solved with hard work, practical experience, and the inspiration to push forward until an acceptable solution was reached. Yet, in the ensuing years, their successful completion of the task has been misunderstood. Such misunderstandings have been perpetuated by historians not closely following primary documents and by members and leaders employing these inaccurate histories and oral traditions in the service of foundation-based spiritual analogies.1The Salt Lake Temple is a lieux de mémoire or “site of memory,” a material object upon which Latter-day Saints project an abundance of meaning in addition to the building's utilitarian function as a structure in which they perform temple ritual. It has been a site of memory that tells the story of faithful perseverance amidst financial hardship, personal sacrifice for the communal good, and a sign of God's hand in the building of the Latter-day Saint kingdom in the American West. Stories about its construction serve to augment its significance within the collective consciousness of Latter-day Saint memory and culture.As with any good site of memory, people have generated and perpetuated stories about the temple that are simply not true. This article addresses two of the most popular interrelated myths of the Salt Lake Temple: first, that the arches in the basement walls atop the footing were a divinely inspired type of engineering unknown in their day that made the temple earthquake proof, and second, that the entire foundation was taken up and replaced in 1858 after the conclusion of the Utah War. This will be done by accurately reconstructing the history of the temple's foundation based on contemporary documents and then addressing the origins of folklore surrounding these two topics. In addition, this article seeks to fill in a gap of historical knowledge in relation to the actual failures in the foundation's initial construction methods and the resulting corrections. While we assess the basis of these myths that have proliferated over the years, it is beyond the scope of this article to analyze the function of these myths in Latter-day Saint culture and history.Construction of the temple foundations consumed over ten of the forty years that the Salt Lake Temple took to build. Builders had to solve engineering and transportation problems to quarry, transport, cut, and place the large stone blocks while battling crickets and drought, the United States Army, and the financial and logistical demands of assisting tens of thousands of immigrants to Utah. They also had to determine what resources should be devoted to the foundations and what level of quality the workmanship should meet. One of the most successful decisions in terms of the temple's long-term stability was its location. Brigham Young's selection of the alluvial fan at the mouth of City Creek Canyon as the site to bear the tremendous weight of building was fortuitous. The dense layers of sand and gravel provide an excellent bearing medium for the heavy temple with its thick granite walls.It is important at the outset to define the various terms used in this article when referring to parts of the foundation. The first eight feet of the foundation is trapezoidal in cross section, sixteen feet wide at the base and tapering to approximately eight to ten feet wide at the top. This bottom element is the footing. The top row of stone in the footing is called the flagging course and is composed of thinner pieces of stone that were intended to level off the top of the footing. The upper eight feet of the foundation will be referred to as the basement wall. This includes inverted arches that rest upon the flagging course of the footing. Together the footing and the basement walls constitute the foundation—all this stonework being below grade.On February 14, 1853, Brigham Young dug his spade into the earth on the Temple Block to officially break ground for the construction of the Salt Lake Temple. He had just finished addressing the several thousand Saints gathered to witness the event from a buggy and had moved to the southeast corner of the future temple. In his characteristic directness, he dug a spade full of dirt and warned the packed crowd, “Get out of my way for I am going to throw this.”2 The crowd moved back, and Young forcefully cast the dirt outside the footprint of the future temple. A ceremonial turning of the earth would not do—he had to really initiate the excavation. Following the prayers and sermons, the assembled congregation “rushed to the hole to get a chance to throw a little dirt out.”3 Thus began a forty-year project constructing the primary building of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the most iconic structure of the Great Basin region.The construction of the wall surrounding the Temple Block provided a learning opportunity for workers to hone skills in quarrying stone, transporting stone, and assembling it into a structure. Initial plans called for the wall to have a sandstone base five feet tall and three feet thick at the top, sunk two and half feet below grade. Upon the “cut cap” an adobe wall would rise another ten feet.4 The Temple Block wall was reminiscent of the wall initiated, but never completed, around the Nauvoo Temple.5 In October 1852 plans were expanded to complete the wall with a six-feet-high iron picket fence and add a multiportal entrance gate featuring a statue of Joseph Smith, although these more ambitious plans were not realized. Since early plans for the temple had multiple ground-level entrances and no annex, the Temple Block wall may have been thought of as a boundary of sacred space. Young did say that the wall would secure the Temple Block from “spectators . . . drunkards[,] gamblers[,] and every foul curse that has been on other temples.”6Excavation for the Temple Block wall foundation began on February 13, 1852,7 with placement of the first stone on August 3, 1852.8 Daniel H. Wells was the superintendent, Alonzo H. Raleigh was the foreman,9 and some of the laborers were provided by the Public Works Department, a church-sponsored initiative organized the year before to provide employment for those without means.10 For the Temple Block wall, as well as with the temple itself, other laborers donated labor as tithing-in-kind or as fulfillment of ward assignments.11 One presumes that the skill level of workers varied and that the Temple Block wall project provided on-the-job training for some.Prior to the start of construction of the Temple Block wall, church authorities identified Red Butte Canyon, four and a half miles from the Temple Block, as an important source of both building stone and timber. Looking to expedite the transportation of these natural materials from the canyon to the city center, the church chartered the Red Butte Rail Road Company and broke ground for the project in late April of 1851.12 Construction specifications called for wood sleepers and wood rails, as iron for the more conventional iron rails was in extremely short supply in the years prior to the arrival of the transcontinental railroad eighteen years later. Since the canyon is at a higher elevation than the Temple Block, the intent was to load the cars in the canyon and coast them down into town with a brakeman in control. Employing wooden railroads and wooden plank roads to cover short distances was a common practice in the early nineteenth century. In the eastern states, wood rails were reinforced with iron straps nailed to the top of the rails to reduce the crushing of wood fibers where heavy wheel loads bore on the rails. However, in iron-poor Utah, reinforcing the wood rail with iron was apparently not an option.Church leaders abandoned construction of the railroad from Red Butte Canyon not long after commencing it. Why they did so is not clear, although an epistle of the First Presidency cited “insufficient laborers” as a cause.13 The reality that the system could not handle the heavy loads generated by a stone quarry may also have become quickly apparent. Whatever the causes, the office of public works bypassed the rail system and began construction of a wagon road in May 1852.14The transportation of stone was a significant challenge in the early years of the Salt Lake City settlement. Not all wagons built for agricultural use would be sufficiently stout to carry loads of building stone, much like a pickup truck today cannot handle the loads carried by dual-axle dump trucks. The first call to volunteers to haul stone to the Temple Block resulted in cobble-sized stones that were inadequate for the foundation. Unable to make use of the small stones, a public notice went out rolling back the invitation for volunteers to bring stones to the Temple Block, asking for a little time to determine how to move larger stones.15 The design intent for the Temple Block wall foundation was to have stones over one ton in weight,16 not the smaller cobbles initially delivered in the first call for volunteers. Handling and transporting stones of the weight needed for foundations would require both stout equipment and careful technique. Likely, much was learned about logistics during the Temple Block wall construction.Even before the Saints arrived in the valley, Young suggested the design of the new temple would follow the pattern established in Nauvoo. He had intended for the architect of the Nauvoo Temple, William Weeks, to design the Salt Lake Temple. However, when Weeks and his wife Caroline left the church in June 1848,17 Young eventually settled on his brother-in-law Truman O. Angell, who worked with Weeks on the Nauvoo Temple.With the near completion of the base of the Temple Block wall, focus turned to the temple itself. Plans moved forward during the October 1852 general conference with a public discussion of temple building. On the final day of the conference, Heber C. Kimball raised the issue of materials for building the temple. He suggested possibilities ranging from the sandstone already in use for the base of the Temple Block wall to adobe used in the construction of the tithing office to the “splendid stone” (oolite) quarried in Sanpete County. Though he mentioned the possibility of adobe several times, Kimball ultimately proposed that the Saints use stone in the construction of the temple. Following supportive comments made by George A. Smith and John Taylor, Kimball again took the stand and declared a motion to “build a Temple of the best materials that can be obtained in the mountains of North America, and that the [First] Presidency dictate where the Stone and other materials shall be obtained.” The motion was seconded and carried.18Unanimous support for Kimball's motion failed to settle the issue for Brigham Young. At the conclusion of the conference, he offered his “opinion” on the subject. Judging himself a “chemist in theory” though not in practice, Young advanced a pseudoscientific argument for building the temple of adobe bricks. Young believed that the great pyramids of Egypt were built of mud brick, similar to adobe used in the Salt Lake Valley. Based on this belief, he reasoned that after many years, adobe would “compose” into stone. He said that sandstone, limestone, and the oolite found in Sanpete County had already reached peak composition and were now in a state of decomposition. For that reason, he argued that a temple built of adobes would outlast one built of sandstone, limestone, or oolite. Although Young differed with the opinions expressed by the Saints, including the members of the Twelve, he suggested he would ultimately acquiesce to their desires.19Following Young's ideas, Angell's initial plans for the temple called for thick adobe walls faced with freestone, probably the oolitic limestone from Sanpete County that would eventually be used to build the Manti Temple.20 His March 1853 plan (dating to the month following the groundbreaking ceremony) shows walls ten feet thick at the top of the footing (including the thickness of the freestone veneer). Adobe is much weaker than building stone, and to limit the stress on the material, Angell specified the walls to be very thick to spread the load over a larger area. William Ward, Angell's assistant, later recalled that “on several occasions the foundations and thickness of the walls was the subject of conversations.”21 This extremely wide basement wall and footing significantly increased the quantity of soil that needed to be excavated.Following the groundbreaking ceremony, workers proceeded to complete the trenches for the foundations based on the adobe-walled plan. Workers were recruited from the local wards, and Apostle Wilford Woodruff was the superintendent over the excavation.22 There were adequate numbers of workers but insufficient numbers of teams and wagons to haul away the dirt. Lack of teams slowed the work enough that a general call from the Deseret News exclaimed, “Are there not a few extra teams roaming on the prairie, that the brethren would like to put into the Temple service, when they are informed of the need of them?”23 Young's confident declaration at the groundbreaking on February 14, 1853, that the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the temple would take place in less than two months on April 6, 1853, put a squeeze on the work. Accordingly, workers fully excavated the corners of the building foundation outline where the cornerstones would be placed and advanced the trenches in between as best as could be accomplished. The trenches eventually would be twenty feet wide and sixteen feet deep on the east end of the temple, but due to the six feet change in grade from east to west, the trench on the west end was only ten feet deep. The excavated trenches reached a stratum of well-packed gravel,24 an excellent bearing medium due to its density and ability to drain away excess moisture.As excavation for the footings progressed, Young attempted to revive the abandoned wooden railroad to Red Butte Canyon and called for workers to complete it.25 If this railroad would have worked, it would have saved enormous quantities of time and expense. However, unnamed difficulties (perhaps the inability for wood rails to bear the weight of cars laden with stone) prevented the project from being completed. The sandstone cornerstones were prepared in the quarry, measuring 6 x 4 x 2 feet and weighing a little over seven thousand pounds.26 Beyond the means for volunteers with agricultural wagons to transport, a contract for moving the stones was given to John, Joseph, and Adam Sharp who used heavy wagons and an ox team.27 The final cornerstone arrived on the Temple Block and was placed on April 5, 1853, one day ahead of the ceremony,28 no doubt causing some anxious moments.On the morning of April 6, 1853, a crowd of six thousand assembled for the occasion, with less than half that number able to fit into the old tabernacle where John Taylor led the congregation in prayer and Brigham Young called the meeting to order.29 Following performances by the color guard and bands, a procession of general authorities and a selection of “architects and workmen” under the banner “Zion's Workmen” made their way to the southeast corner of the temple excavation site.30 The ceremony began in the southeast corner, where all three members of the First Presidency, Patriarch John Smith, Thomas Bulloch, and likely Truman O. Angell surmounted the cornerstone, already in place, to officially dedicate it unto the Lord.31 On behalf of Brigham Young, Thomas Bulloch delivered an oration, presumably written or reviewed by Brigham Young, on the history of the ancient of the and those built in the Following the oration, Heber C. Kimball offered a prayer of and In a the other stones were in a similar prayer by the of the stone” and an atop the stone. the for the cornerstone, and a in City who in the of offered the On the cornerstone, John Young, of the the oration, and George John Young's offered the The procession moved to the Apostle the oration, by Apostle the of the the of the and the of the Following the from atop the cornerstone, Brigham Young the crowd, asking the to and the Saints we have finished this temple a of there in then build many excavation was sufficiently complete to the sandstone footing on June at the southeast corner of the with Alonzo H. Raleigh as the public works The work proceeded with or upon the supply of stone from the quarry, the of for the or the of workers who were to other public works At times, as many as were and the footings took a little over a year to Upon the footings provided upon which to build the rest of the temple. base spread the load out over a the on the soil the construction of the about the material to be used for the temple would have the of building a structure the of the temple adobe with walls eight feet Truman O. Angell's February 1852 plans for the out as a adobe structure with an office However, by the time that construction began on the in May the large structure was abandoned and two smaller were Angell had little in the adobe to support a building. when adobe is from or its own weight will it for a wall over feet In late the was made to use the large granite found in the bottom of Canyon, and then in the granite from The is more than adobe and can bear significantly higher However, no change was made to the thickness of the walls when granite was for Since the footings were already about and building plans were already leaders to the thickness as initially This had as quarrying granite to walls tapering to six feet at the top was an enormous task in and of itself. Angell initially prepared the for the those working in the Church more stone this Temple than Nauvoo their one year later when granite was for the entire temple granite had been for the temple teams to sandstone from Red Butte Canyon to the Temple Block for the temple footing. April Angell for stones for the course on top of the This flagging course was thinner than the course of large stones in the and it was important that it be level and as it would support the basement walls and walls the flagging course was not as and accurately as it should have and would difficulties down the road as the construction Based on later and from work on the workers apparently a level course by the large flagging stones in place with smaller wooden used to and the flagging were in some left in under the flagging stones to level the design for the walls specified a of arches to be built at the bottom of of the of the sandstone basement wall the first course of The arches the load of the the of the One can of them as an inverted which an stress to the stone For large as the Salt Lake Temple, these inverted arches the of the footing under the stone more than the footing under the Such would in the walls of the the nineteenth and early of the temple mentioned the use of inverted arches in its design to the weight of the temple walls on its Salt Lake Temple for in arches are in the to the enormous of the later in the a surrounding the arches and This them as an engineering solution to Truman Angell by and that the use of inverted arches was unknown in the United States at the time of the temple's A the foundations is that during an earthquake the temple would on the inverted arches and the large While the inverted arches the of the foundations with to ground they have no on ground In all sixteen arches were to the walls of the temple would be this its arches like those Angell in the Salt Lake Temple were in engineering and building of the If Angell was not already with the he could have about it in two that were in the Utah in and and to Young of these and inverted arches for the foundations of large The were those in the architecture and engineering that Brigham Young and to bring to the new were used by Angell in his for the temple and other the of the First the of the out a for The feet six one eight and one six hole for the is about two feet long and one 2 wide and one and is with a of hard sand stone, about two into the stone, to make the top of the level with the top of the On the of August 13, the First Presidency, of the and a few gathered to place of historical significance in the stone and it in the first course of stone on the southeast end of the basement wall. The a number of and Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff placed the in the the was in place with the was in of and the was in Brigham Young the by a prayer the of the to the to at some future day the of the of and political to significantly on the Salt Lake Temple after June when the footings were initially completed. of and of Saints that had to be Young to construction and focus on the from with the materials from adobe to the large stones for the walls had to be from and later A was proposed to the stone, for which Young obtained from the of Utah on February of a would be to bring to the the and workers that have on the temple walls were put to work the laborers with and for the One that of people were at work at the The from temple construction an opportunity for Young to call Truman O. Angell, his temple on a to from the architecture of that up not really the design of the temple at Since the focus of in was the Angell was not needed and Young it as a good opportunity to the and in the of all the labor that went into the when was turned into the the into the near the mouth of Although the did the in the valley, it was never used to stone to the Temple of at time in the Public Works to including stones to the Temple Block, but only in for the of The quarry was sixteen miles from the Temple Block, and the quarry most of the stone would be obtained in future was eighteen miles The took two with laden wagons in good with In the roads and the task these as many as teams stones from both Red Butte Canyon the Temple Block and Canyon the in many as twenty on the Temple Block to the stone from the the use of a prepared by Alonzo H. stones were into place on the temple's basement of the basement wall on the sandstone footing would be of On May of that construction of the Temple Block wall, for their focus to fully to the the Saints an important years they had arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. They to the at the top of the of the temple stone quarry on this At during the and informed Brigham Young that an was Utah, been by United States to a new in the The focus of church was now the of the of the supply and time for However, public works to the basement wall a full two and a half by the end of the slowed the of the United States Army, the to at the of and the of supply in March 1858 Brigham Young to the stones in the hole that had been dug for the foundation and what would follow the arrival of a and to the from or the stone, Young workers to the stones, and basement He also that the on the Temple Block, including and be with the of of the public works for wagons and than an with the United States Brigham Young most of the Saints and to to Salt Lake City to the ground should the from the plan to have the