THE next
time you enjoy the gothic and symbolic features
of the one and only Salt Lake LDS Temple, consider it’s dollar price to
build -- $3,469,118.
That was the
price given by Elder George Reynolds, a member of the Quorum of the Seventy, back
in 1895, to a Philadelphia newspaper, as quoted in the Deseret Weekly News of
March 23, 1895.
Factor in
the inflation and even in 1916 dollars (the furthest back an on-line government
inflation calculator goes), that price equals at least $86,559,450 in 2017
dollars.
(The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hasn’t revealed the actual costs of any
temples for many decades now.)
However, in
contrast the San Diego Temple, which opened in 1993, was reported by the Los
Angeles Times to have cost an estimated $24 million. (That’s $40.6 million in
2017 dollars.)
San Diego Temple.
And, the
original Ogden Temple, that opened in 1972, cost $4.29 million (or some $25
million in today’s dollars.)
Note that
the Salt Lake Temple required some 40 years to build – far more than any other
temple. Also, some volunteer, unpaid labor was used back then, or the price
over four decades likely would have been much more, likely $100 millon plus.
Furthermore,
Elder Reynolds in that 1895 article stated that exact costs of the temple were
impossible. Still, he said about the Salt Lake Temple’s construction:
“In the
early stages the progress was slow and very expensive, for it took four yoke of
oxen four days to bring a single stone from the quarry twenty miles distant.”
He said some
estimated it cost $100 for every stone cut, moved by oxen to the temple site
and then laid in place. He also stressed that metal and other materials were
very expensive to obtain, especially until the railroad came along.
Pencil drawing by Steve Arave
