New Temple Announced for South Salt Lake Valley

Plans to build a new temple in the South Jordan area near Salt Lake City were announced in February by the First Presidency.

The temple, to be called the Jordan River Temple, will be located in the lower part of the Salt Lake Valley “to take care of the mass of Church population in the Wasatch Front,” said President Spencer W. Kimball.

The Jordan River Temple will be built on a fifteen-acre site, the location of which has not been announced. It will be the seventh temple in Utah and the fourth along the Wasatch Front, Utah’s most populous area.

Work on the Jordan River Temple has begun under the direction of Church Architect Emil B. Fetzer. Construction will begin when plans are ready, probably during the latter part of 1978.

“We will go forward with it as fast as plans can be produced for it,” President Kimball said.

The new temple will have approximately the same capacity as the Provo and Ogden, Utah, temples, which were dedicated and opened in 1972. Boundaries of the new temple district will be established later, President Kimball said. Some 348,000 Church members live in the eighty-six stakes in Salt Lake County, and some 151,000 members live in the forty-seven stakes in Utah County.

Attendance at the Salt Lake, Provo, and Ogden temples reached all-time highs during 1977. Temple work in the area served by those three temples has increased 293 percent since 1971, when the Salt Lake Temple alone served members in the area. During 1977, 1,901,608 endowments were performed in the Salt Lake, Provo, and Ogden temples, a significant increase over the 483,985 performed in the Salt Lake Temple in 1971.

About half of the endowments performed in all Church temples now take place in these three temples.

The Jordan River Temple is the sixth temple to be announced by President Kimball. The others now in design or construction stages are at Sao Paulo, Brazil; Tokyo, Japan; Seattle, Washington; Mexico City, Mexico; and American Samoa.

President Kimball has dedicated the Washington D.C. Temple and rededicated the expanded and renovated temples in St. George, Utah, and Mesa, Arizona.

Fourteen of the Church’s sixteen temples are now in use. Temples in Laie, Hawaii, and Logan, Utah, are undergoing renovation and expansion. The Hawaii Temple will be rededicated in June, and the Logan Temple will be rededicated later this year. The Sao Paulo Temple will be dedicated October 30.

Construction is expected to start this spring on the Tokyo and Seattle temples. Design work is underway on the Mexico City and American Samoa temples.

President Spencer W. Kimball announces plans for the new Jordan River Temple at a news conference.