Why the Logan Temple was Gutted in 1976

                                Logan, Utah Temple.

   THE Logan, Utah Temple was first Latter-day Saint Temple to have muraled ordinance rooms for a live-acting endowment presentation. However, where are these pioneer-era pieces of art? 

  Why does the interior of the Logan Temple look just l

   This blog will eventually answer those questions and many more … First, a sidelight fact: The outside walls of the Logan Temple were originally painted a pinkish, off-color white, so as to hide the dark and rough looking limestone.

   By the early 20th Century, that paint was allowed to fade away and hence today’s exterior look of the Logan Temple. All the temple’s handcrafted, pioneer interior was removed, as well the roof, leaving only the original pioneer walls remaining. The renovation of the Logan Temple’s interior was patterned after the inside of the original Ogden and Provo Temples. 

  The formerly muraled rooms were wallpapered and made ready for all-in-one rooms, that used a motion-picture presentation of the endowment ceremony.

 When President Spencer W. Kimball rededicated the Logan Temple, on March 13-15, 1979, he expressed regret over the loss of the pioneer craftmanship of the revamped inside of the sacred structure. 

  (Note: All the preceding information is from the Church News of September 2, 2022.) 

  -There are rumors that a significant amount of the pioneer era murals removed from the 1970s Logan Temple are in church storage ... and could be reused, should the Logan Temple undergo another renovation some day?

   Now, here’s the bombshell – not commonly known information as to why the Logan Temple required such extensive renovation in the first place, from 1976-1979 -- 

  (This information was obtained from Fred Baker, former head of the Church Physical Facilities, from the 1970s until 1991.) 

  The Logan Temple (and Manti too) were both considered for extensive remodels in the mid-1960s, because they were overtaxed and unable to accommodate the increasing number of Latter-day Saint patrons. 

  However, according to Brother Baker, such renovation would have been too costly, as new building codes would have to follow and thus the interior of both temples would have to be gutted.

  Instead, the Church built the Ogden and Provo Temples, to take pressure off the Logan and Manti temples. This idea worked for the short term.

   By about 1974, the Church started making plans to renovate the Logn Temple. Then, a natural disaster struck – The Pocatello Valley Earthquake, a magnitude 6.3, shocked the region, with an epicenter near the Utah-Idaho border. High rise buildings in downtown Salt Lake City even swayed from the quake, though they were 100 miles distant.

   According to Brother Baker, unknown to the Church for just over a year after the Pocatello Valley quake, was that its strong tremors had cracked and broken in two the main support inside the center and upper floor of the Logan Temple, where the Solemn Assembly room was. 

  This damage was not discovered until the temple was closed and preliminary renovations started. The miracle was that the top of the Logan Temple had not already collapsed, from the quake damage.

   (It seems often that the Lord does NOT always stop tragic events, but because of his tender mercies, he does lessen and mitigate their effects.) 

  Brother Baker said when this extensive damage was discovered, the Solemn Assembly room was permanently taken out and to get everything up to code, the entire interior had to get gutted and the roof removed. Keeping the Solemn Assembly room would have equaled a haphazard look and design in the temple and the Church Architect and Church leaders agreed it had to go. 

  Hence, why the Logan Temple is only pioneer looking on the outside. 

  Brother Baker also had this say:

   “If there was ever a time when I wanted three bodyguards and somebody watching my house every minute, it was then, because of the people in Cache Valley. When you touch a local temple, and Grandpa Aaron comes after you . . . You couldn’t imagine the sheets of paper that were pasted on our cars and posted around town. ‘These horrible people are ruining our lives and wrecking our temple’ …But local people hated us for touching their temple, and I could understand that. We never received that kind of response from the local members when we did the other temples. We did all thirteen existing temples, but the Logan Temple was the only one that we got such a negative response on.”

  -Fred Baker, of Ogden, was the director of Church Physical Facilities from 1965-1991. He passed away in 2015 at age 89. He was the author’s stake president at one time, as well as a family friend. 

  NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.