Wednesday, May 26, 2021

‘This is where we build the temple’: How President Nelson selected the Deseret Peak Utah Temple site

Only a few people knew that President Russell M. Nelson was visiting potential temple sites last November in Utah’s Tooele Valley.

Three months earlier, he and his counselors in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had announced that they had withdrawn plans to build the Tooele Valley Utah Temple and an accompanying housing development around it in Erda.

The First Presidency had determined that a temple in the valley still was needed, so a member of the Presiding Bishopric was dispatched to look at possible sites.

“He went back with recommendations and then shortly after that, President Nelson came out personally, because he wanted to be sure,” said Richard Droubay, chair of the temple committee.

Church presidents have a long history of identifying temple sites in their roles as prophets, dating back to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

One of the Tooele Valley sites under consideration was owned by Perry Homes Utah, which was in the midst of rolling out a major suburban housing development on the west edge of Tooele City.

“President Nelson came to this site, along with some other sites, but then he came back to this site and said, ‘This is where we build the temple,’” Droubay said. “And that means a lot, obviously. To have his presence in the valley means a lot, but to have his stamp on this piece of property is amazing.”

Last week, backhoes began to move earth to construct the Deseret Peak Utah Temple in the midst of the Perry Homes development, which eventually will surround it.

“We’re very grateful for the Perry family, to donate this site, 17 acres right in the middle of a housing development that they could have sold by now,” Droubay said. “They’ve donated the property and we’re extremely thankful for that.”

Perry Homes’ Bill Perry Jr. did not return requests for comment, but he attended the groundbreaking ceremony with his wife on May 15. They heard Elder Brook P. Hales, a General Authority Seventy who lives in the valley, mention their company in the prayer dedicating the ground for construction: “We acknowledge with gratitude the Perry Homes Corporation, which has so generously donated this ground for the construction of the temple.”

Droubay said that was not the only donation made for the temple.

“One morning I came down here we had five major contractors with equipment, personnel and men that they’d hired that they were paying out of their own pocket, working on this, donating their time and effort just to make this site beautiful for the groundbreaking,” he said.

Elder Hales confirmed that President Nelson visited Tooele Valley sites in November “to personally select where the temple would be built, and he settled on this one. And I’m grateful for that. I think it’s an inspired choice. It’s a stunning sight,” with Deseret Peak looming nearly 12,000 feet high to the west in the Stansbury Mountains.

And this may not be the last time a prophet of the church visits potential temple sites in the Tooele Valley.

During the broadcast of the groundbreaking ceremony, Elder Hales said, “I heard someone say in a meeting I attended — I’ll let you guess which meeting it was — ‘Well, if we need to we’ll build another temple in Tooele.’

“Now that should be our goal. That’s not an announcement; that should be our goal,” he added. “So let’s fill the temple, brothers and sisters, so that the workers and the presidency are overwhelmed with work, and that will be a great thing.”

My Recent Stories

New leaders named for BYU-Pathway Worldwide, Church Education System (May 26)

Practice of ‘time-only marriages’ in Latter-day Saint temples discontinued (May 24)

Some Latter-day Saint missionary training centers will reopen on limited basis in June (May 24)

Download the free Deseret News app for access to more news right from your pocket.

What I’m Reading ...

The June issue of Deseret Magazine has a great feature on Donny Osmond looking back at all the different eras of his life.

I was really happy to see this story about a former BYU football player who is now a doctor and researcher developing a possible therapy for football players and others suffering from CTE.

This story really stood out. A Latter-day Saint attending BYU was hired as a cantor singing for Catholic worship services in a cathedral in Salt Lake City.

As a movie fan and fan of the 2018 movie “A Quiet Place,” this story was a must-read. John Krasinski, who starred, co-wrote and directed the movie talks about the tense wait for Friday’s release of “A Quiet Place Part II,” which was about to hit theaters just as the pandemic closed down public America in March 2020.

Keith Erekson, the director of the Church History Library, has a new book out about how to sniff out false rumors and myths about Latter-day Saint history or anything else. One of the examples is Elvis Presley’s copy of the Book of Mormon.

Here’s our list, updated weekly, of which temples have reopened and what their status is. You may have seen that five dozen of them are moving to the final phase before reopening completely.

Behind the Scenes

My friend and colleague Jeff Allred got a nice detail shot of the imprints on the shovels used to turn dirt in the ceremonial groundbreaking for the Deseret Peak Utah Temple on May 15, 2021.

Shovels used during the Deseret Peak Utah Temple groundbreaking in Tooele, Utah, on Saturday, May 15, 2021. (Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News)