1888 Dedication of the Manti Utah Temple
At the start of October 1877, over five months after the Manti Utah Temple site was dedicated, 107 people were working on constructing the temple. Some workers lived in the city of Ephraim, so they walked seven miles from Ephraim to Manti every Monday morning then walked home every Saturday night.
The temple and its furnishings cost a combined $991,991.81 — an amount worth over $10 million when the temple was rededicated in 1985. Starting in 1877, Latter-day Saints within the temple district donated 50 cents or offered 50-cents worth of commodities every month for 11 years. Eggs laid by hens on Sunday were called “temple eggs” and donated to the bishops’ storehouse.
A private dedication was held for the Manti Utah Temple on May 17, 1888. President Wilford Woodruff, the senior Apostle after the death of President John Taylor, presided at this dedication and offered the prayer. He was joined by Elders Lorenzo Snow, George Q. Cannon, Brigham Young Jr. and Heber J. Grant of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and other selected Church leaders.
The house of the Lord was dedicated publicly on May 21, 1888. Elder Lorenzo Snow of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles read President Woodruff's dedicatory prayer. The public dedication was held inside the main assembly room on the upper floor of the temple and was filled to capacity.
Despite the building’s exquisite 19th-century architecture, craftsmanship and artwork, “This isn’t a museum of architecture and design,” said Elder Jonathan S. Schmitt — General Authority Seventy and assistant executive director of the Priesthood and Family Department and the Temple Department — in 2024. “Perhaps the question we could ask ourselves is ‘Why did these Saints, why did these pioneers, sacrifice everything that they had so that they could build this holy house of the Lord?’”
Elder Schmitt continued, “It’s because they knew that this is the place where they could be endowed with heavenly power to help them endure life’s challenges and life’s trials.”
In the dedicatory prayer, President Woodruff pleaded for the temple to be “as one of the gates of heaven, opening into the straight and narrow path that leads to endless lives and eternal dominion.”
Read the dedicatory prayer of the Manti Utah Temple here.
1985 Rededication of the Manti Utah Temple
The house of the Lord was closed in fall 1981 for renovations to modernize the old building by adding upgrades like air conditioning, plumbing and new sealing rooms. Latter-day Saints offered their talents to renovate the building, including 64 sisters from nearby stakes who spent a year making needlepoint upholstery for an altar and 30 chairs in a sealing room.
Sixty-five pieces of original furniture were also restored, along with murals on the walls and new lighting fixtures. New carpet was laid, along with new draperies under the direction of Florence S. Jacobsen, director of arts and sites in the Church Historical Department.
A portion of the original carpeting for the celestial room of the temple was found stored in a Manti home. The carpet was used as a template to reproduce the carpet using a specialized loom in England that could weave together 27 different colors and shades. Once finished, the carpet was installed in the celestial room.
Almost a century after the first dedication, Church President Gordon B. Hinckley rededicated the Manti temple on June 14, 1985. Nine dedicatory sessions were held, with President Hinckley speaking at each. The temple, though dedicated, would not be fully operational until Sept. 3 of the same year to allow temple workers time to be called and trained to perform live sessions.
This temple was the third pioneer-era temple to be refurbished and rededicated, following both the St. George Utah Temple in 1975 and the Logan Utah Temple in 1979. The Salt Lake Temple, the final pioneer-era temple, underwent temporary refurbishment in 1982 but was not closed for renovation until 2019.
Dedicatory prayer excerpt: “The riches of eternity have been showered upon generations of Thy saints who have here partaken of the everlasting promises given in Thy house. The benefits and blessings of these same ordinances have extended to great concourses beyond the veil that those in that sphere also might go forward on the way of immortality and eternal life.”
Read the rededication prayer of the Manti Utah Temple here.
2024 Rededication of the Manti Utah Temple
Marred with dirt, grime and the wrong clear coat, the murals decorating the ordinance rooms inside the Manti Utah Temple were long overdue for restoration. Professionals spent four months carefully removing over “130 years of gunk” from the historic paintings.
“We needed to care for the murals,” said Emiline Twitchell, Church History Department conservator over the project for the Church of Jesus Christ, in a report published on ChurchofJesusChrist.org on April 21. “To extend the lifespan of these murals means we preserve a symbolic entry point into new understandings of our temple worship, theology and relationship with the divine.”
The mural in the creation room is the only original remaining in the temple, though the others date back to the 1940s.
But as important as the murals and the stunning architecture are to the legacy of this house of the Lord, they fall second to the renewed emphasis leaders hope members put on the ordinances performed inside.
“We build temples to honor the Lord,” said President Russell M. Nelson, who rededicated the temple and whose eight great-grandparents settled in Sanpete County after immigrating from Europe. “They are built for worship and not for show. We make sacred covenants of eternal significance inside these sacred walls.”
Sister Wendy W. Nelson — who also had deep family ties to the area and accompanied her husband to the rededication — said that as magnificent as the renewed Manti temple is, this temple is “so much more than a building, so much more than a structure or an edifice. This Manti temple is the Lord’s invitation to experience God and all that He has in store for His faithful children — on both sides of the veil.”
Joining the Nelsons was Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, whose Danish convert great-great grandparents Jens and Ane Catherine Anderson and their 16-year-old son, Andrew, made the journey to Utah to be able to partake of temple blessings. Jens died on the voyage, but Andrew later worked on the temple.
“As it should be, and in tribute to giving his life for the ‘cause of Christ,’ Jens’ temple work was completed in pioneer temples. That is why they came. To make covenants in the temple with God,” Elder Rasband said.
Speaking of the rededication and its connection to the early Saints in the area, recently returned missionary David Mackey said, “An important legacy has been passed on.” The temple is “an example of faith and of sacrifice of these individuals. They knew how to set aside self-interest and their own bucket lists and agendas to work in harmony with other like-minded individuals to accomplish something that people doubted they could accomplish.”
He added: “The Sanpete Valley would be a very different place without the Manti temple.”
The Manti Utah Temple was rededicated in one session by President Nelson on April 21, 2024.
During the rededication service, President Nelson invited the Saints in Central Utah to make temple worship a regular part of their lives.
“Doing so will change your lives. Regular worship in the temple will inoculate you against the persuasive poisons of the adversary. Temple worship will strengthen you to meet the challenges of everyday life. I promise you that.”
Dedicatory prayer excerpt: “We pray also that this may be a house of peace, a house of comfort and a house of personal revelation for all who enter these doors worthily. We ask Thee to bless those who seek to understand the power with which they are endowed here to receive knowledge from on high.”
Read the 2024 rededication prayer of the Manti Utah Temple here.
Timeline of the Manti Utah Temple
The Manti Utah Temple was announced by President Brigham Young on June 25, 1875, and the site was dedicated for construction on April 25, 1877. President Wilford Woodruff wrote the temple’s dedicatory prayer, which was read by Elder Lorenzo Snow of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on May 21, 1888.
After major renovations that started in 1981, President Gordon B. Hinckley rededicated the house of the Lord on June 14, 1985. The Manti temple was temporarily closed in October 2021 for refurbishment. After a public open house from March 14 to April 5, 2024, it was rededicated in a single session on Sunday, April 21, 2024, by Church President Russell M. Nelson.
Architecture and Design of the Manti Utah Temple
The Manti Utah Temple covers an area of 74,792 square feet and sits on a 27-acre site. The east tower, the highest point on the temple, rises 179 feet high. A castellated style reflects construction influences of Gothic Revival, French Renaissance Revival, French Second Empire and colonial architecture.
The exterior is made of cream-colored oolite limestone excavated from the same hill the temple is built on. A tower rises above both short sides of the rectangular temple, with a domed cupola above each tower. Rows of arched windows circle around the temple.
Inside the building are a baptistry, a celestial room, four ordinance rooms and eight sealing rooms. Both towers hold a spiral staircase, one staircase leading to an endowment room and the other leading to small sealing rooms. The staircases, built without a center post to support them, were referred to as “an engineering marvel” by President Gordon B. Hinckley.
In November 2009 general conference, Elder L. Tom Perry shared a story of how the temple’s interior ceiling came to be. The assignment to build the temple’s roof was given to fine carpenters from Norway. Although they had never built a roof before, they had experience building ships. They decided to design plans for a ship and then turn the plans upside down to make a roof.
Interior Photos of the Manti Utah Temple
