Mormons and non-Mormons alike will get their first peek inside Utah’s 17th LDS temple starting this week, a little more than two years after officials broke ground on the Cedar City project.
From Friday through Nov. 18, free tours of the nearly 40,000-square-foot edifice at 280 S. Cove Drive will be offered daily, except for Sundays, by reservation. (Go to www.templeopenhouse.lds.org for tickets.)
Resting on eight acres atop a hill overlooking its namesake Iron County city of 31,000, the Cedar City Temple will be the 159th operating temple in the world for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It will serve 45,000 Mormons in southern Utah and eastern Nevada congregations.
An 18th LDS temple in the Beehive State is planned for Saratoga Springs.
The Cedar City structure of precast concrete panels stands 260 feet high, its spire topped by a 13-foot state of the Angel Moroni (a figure from LDS history and scripture).
Project manager Mark Berry said in a news release that the temple’s spire has “more of a cupola-type feel” to it than standard versions on other recent LDS temples — a style reminiscent of older Mormon tabernacles.
The landscaping seeks to mirror the redrock and high desert of the region, and incorporates native flowers and berry-laden juniper plants.
The outside scenery is echoed inside with art glass for the exterior windows that display designs mindful of the columbine flowers that dot southern Utah’s high mountain ranges.
The interior includes African mahogany and sapele woodwork, as well as stone and tile imported from Israel, Turkey, Spain and Iran.
“There are elements into the stone that are red in nature,” Berry said, ”and they kind of depict the colors that we find in the natural stones and formations here in southern Utah that help us pull together this pioneer feel in this area.”
Original art pieces also adorn the interior, among them two historic windows that were donated by the Astoria Presbyterian Church in Queens, N.Y., when that building was razed in 2008.
“We want to make sure that we have the finest materials that we can possibly provide,” Berry said, “and [use the best] craftsmanship that we have so that it would be worthy of our Heavenly Father and our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”
Latter-day Saints view temples as houses of God, places where they can participate in their faith’s most sacred ordinances, including eternal marriage.
Cedar City has spent months sprucing up their town to greet the crowds expected to attend the three-week temple open house.
Tours will end the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Once dedication celebrations and ceremonies are completed Dec. 9 and 10, respectively, the temple will be open only to Mormons in good standing.