The Salt Lake Temple Part I: A Sandy Foundation

 Previously: A Masterpiece in Manti

Welcome readers, to part I of a new series on the Salt Lake Temple. Because the Salt Lake temple narrative covers a span of forty years, this will require a deeper dive into LDS historical events and will end up being several posts long. When I'm finished with the Salt Lake Temple I'll return to my Ancient Temple series where I'll cover four more temples I believe were built by a previous civilization: Laie, Hawaii; Cardston, Alberta; Mesa, Arizona; Idaho Falls, Idaho.

How would it affect your life to learn that the LDS pioneers did not build, but instead found the Salt Lake Temple already there when they arrived in Utah? 

Would that change how you look at the entire LDS historical narrative in Utah?  

This world we live in is not what it seems. We're beginning to realize that our history is completely fabricated, simply made up to fit a narrative that is meant to control our minds. 

It is my belief that everything we're told by government, media, or any other establishment source, is a carefully crafted illusion planned to deceive and control humanity towards an end time agenda. 

All the world is a stage, and the "official" history of Utah is a big part of the play. 

Salt Lake City is obviously an ancient city. It is full of incredibly beautiful stone buildings that, in my opinion, have been here for centuries. When Johnston's army came to Utah in the late 1850s, one of his Colonel's described the city as follows:

The city is beyond my power of description. It is beautiful--even magnificent. Every street is bordered by large trees beneath which on either side run murmuring brooks with pebbly bottoms. Not a sign of dirt of any kind to be seen. The houses are surrounded by large gardens now green with summer foliage. All the houses are built of adobe nicely washed with some brown earth, the public buildings large [and] handsomely ornamented surrounded by walls of stone... (Colonel John Van Deusen Du Bois, Circa 1858, quoted in The Salt Lake Temple: A Monument to the People, pp. 52-53, by C. Nina Hamilton, emphasis added)

This was around 1858, only ten years after the city was settled. How were they able to build these stone walls and large public buildings so quickly? Colonel Du Bois doesn't specify which buildings he saw, but they obviously left an impression.  

In addition to stone buildings, there are tunnels all over the city and under Temple Square that have no construction history. They don't even attempt to explain how they got there. 

We're told that many massive stone buildings in Salt Lake City were built in a time when there were no power tools and no cranes. 

We see lots strange photos of majestic stone architecture surrounded by dirt roads full of horse-drawn wagons, making no sense at all.

How can they have built all these technologically advanced buildings and not yet know how to even pave the muddy dirt roads?

You can find 19th century photos like this of every major city in the U.S., and all over the world for that matter. Something is not right here. 

We are being lied to. 

The Salt Lake Temple narrative, like the other three temples I have covered, is full of gaps, anomalies and strange stories that just don't add up. 

Some of what I'll be covering in this series are as follows:

• The inconsistencies surrounding the story of the temple foundation.
• The Masonic origins of LDS cornerstone ceremonies.
• How the so-called "Mormon War" was most likely a psyop meant to bolster Brigham Young's power. 
• The lightning fast speed at which they "built" the railroads and what may have actually been happening. 
• How Truman Angell was not trained as a architect, and how Brigham Young sent him to Europe to study architecture after the temple was already drawn, and how he returned unimpressed.
• How the 22 Greek columns in the Salt Lake Temple Celestial Room were planned to originally have carved faces at the top of them, and what that means for the narrative. 
• Why the LDS people supposedly adorned the with temple facade with astrological symbolism (i.e., earth moon, sun, and Saturn stones, as well as inverted baphomet pentagrams) even though Brigham Young's writings and speeches never mention astrology. 
• How in the world the temple went from a massive empty stone shell in 1892 to a fully finished interior, replete with masterful craftsmanship in wood work, with hand-carved columns, giant granite staircases, an empty elevator shaft, and exquisitely detailed artwork and murals... in only one year.      

The LDS people are renowned for building the Salt Lake Temple, their architectural magnum opus. The stories we're told about the sacrifice, toil, adversity, and hardships that were overcome to build the temple are more than just inspiring for true-believing members of the Church, it is part of the story that weaves the very fabric of what it means to be a Latter-Day-Saint. 

I realize in writing this series I am treading on sacred ground for many people who were raised in the traditions of Mormonism, like myself, but there is much more to this story that needs to be examined.

We encounter logistical inconsistencies, blatantly obvious contradictions, anomalous timelines and strangely manipulated photographs--telling us that men with primitive tools accomplished feats of construction that are physically impossible even with todays technology.

This series begins, as all construction does, with the story of the building's foundation. This part of the narrative lasts 14 years, from 1853 to to 1867 (the date we're told that the temple walls finally rose above the basement layer). 

As you are about to see, there is nothing logical or consistent about the story of the foundation of this temple. 

We're told that it was originally built out of sandstone.

But around 1858, the entire foundation hole, with sandstone block footings, was quickly back filled with all the foundation soil which had been laboriously excavated. This was supposedly to hide the construction from Johnston's army. 

Where would the thousands of tons of excavated rocky soil have been stored? Were they keeping it on the temple site, surrounded by the 14 ft. high stone wall that Brigham Young had built to keep idle men busy? Was it stored nearby and hauled back on wagons with horses and oxen? These are logistical questions we are given no answers for. 

But then after all the massive effort to dig out the foundation, then bring all the dirt back to fill it in and hide it--this massive temple foundation hole was totally excavated again (with hand shovels) in 1861!

Ironically, after all this effort to uncover the 8 year old foundation, it was then found to be "defective" and in need of replacement. And this is where we get the story that the sandstone foundation was "taken up" and replaced with granite.  

But hold on a second, after two renovations where the foundation was exposed (one in the 1960s and the current one in the 2020s), we can easily see that the supposedly defective sandstone foundation still remains and was never "taken up" as the official history tells us.

We also know from a 1963 Deseret News article that the foundation is at least twice as deep (30 feet) as Church historians claims it is (16 feet).

After leaked conversations with modern construction workers, we now know that it is at least four stories deep, and possibly much deeper. 

How ironic then, that such a massive building rests upon a sandy... I mean, sandstone foundation? And does this offer us clues as to the true reality of this narrative--and the entire Brighamite history for that matter? 

Let's dive in. 

Built on a Sandy Foundation

As legend has it, when Brigham Young and his small band of followers rolled into the Salt Lake valley in July of 1847, the 46-year-old leader stopped where temple square sits today, and tapping the ground with his cane, declared, "here will be the temple of our God." 

The temperature that day reached 96 degrees, and Young had been riding in the back of a wagon driven by Wilford Woodruff while suffering from spotted fever, a tick-borne illness with a high rate of fatality. 

Finally finding the abandoned city must've been a welcome reprieve to the LDS leader, who was lucky to be alive on that particular day. 

The perfectly surveyed and laid out grid-patterned streets would have been teeming with magnificent structures like the Hotel Utah, the Church Administration building, the Capitol Building, the City-County Building, the Tabernacle, the Assembly Hall, and of course, the Salt Lake Temple. 

Can you imagine what it would have been like to ride in a primitive wagon into an abandoned city with intact and preserved buildings?

For Brigham, the words of Vatican representative Pierre de Smet would have been vindicated: the Jesuit-drawn maps having shown him exactly where to find the city, and perhaps which specific structures were allotted to him and waiting for him to claim under the conditions of his contract with De Smet.

Young and his followers, "the inheritors", would merely need to settle in and start cleaning and refurbishing the empty and abandoned buildings, readying them for the beginnings of an isolated empire where self-appointed polygamous leaders could rule with uncontested totalitarian authority. 

While researching the official stories about how such a magnificent edifice was said to have been built on a faulty sandstone foundation, the words that Jesus Christ spoke to the Nephites came to mind:

Verily, verily I say unto you that this is my doctrine. And whoso buildeth upon this, buildeth upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them. And whoso shall declare more or less than this, and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil and is not built upon my rock, but he buildeth upon a sandy foundation, and the gates of hell standeth open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them. (3 Nephi 5:9, RE, emphasis added)

In addition to Brigham Young's teaching of a massive amount of doctrine far exceeding anything Jesus ever taught about what His church actually is (i.e., plural marriage, Adam-God, no priesthood for blacks, blood atonement), I found it ironic that the official narrative asserts that the massive sandstone foundation had to be replaced in the 1860s. 

Surely, those who were leading "the Lord's Church" would know better than to build their house of God on a sandy foundation.

Yet ironically, sandstone, if even somewhat protected from wind and rain, can actually last centuries. 

Whoever actually built the Salt Lake temple knew exactly what they were doing, as they were masters of architecture. After all, the building is still standing today, having endured hundreds of years of weathering and earthquakes.

Yet, the story of having to replace the sandstone foundation brings the entire narrative into question. 

On one hand, we see a beautiful stone structure constructed masterfully, and on the other we read about a people who made construction errors of epic proportions but somehow were still able to pull off building an edifice that they said "will last through the Millennium".

But now we are told that it needs hundreds of millions of dollars and several years of upgrades to the foundation to make it earthquake proof so it can actually last in the Millennium.

As you read what follows look for subtle clues that give away the fake narrative, clues, deliberately inserted into the stories, that reveal that the LDS people did not build, but found this temple. 

As the story goes, in 1852 a sandstone and adobe wall, 14 feet in height, was constructed around the temple site. The purpose for this wall, we're told, was to provide security for building the temple and to give otherwise "idle" men something to do. 

However, if Utah was indeed an empty desert full of nothing but sagebrush at this early time period, then building secure houses, planning and constructing infrastructure, and establishing farms and digging irrigation ditches would have been plenty to keep the men busy. Idle men would not have survived--unless of course all of that infrastructure was already there. 

Here is a rare photo of the old wall around the temple site, built before the construction of the temple was even started. 

It's a screen shot and poor quality, but you literally can't find photos like this anymore. As you can see, the wall is falling apart and looks ancient:

According to the LDS Church, the design and specifications of the temple were given to Truman Angell by Brigham Young in January of 1853. The following details were recalled by William Ward, assistant architect to Truman, and cited in an 1892 article published by the Deseret News:

The design was formulated in the following manner: Brigham Young drew upon a slate in the architect's office a sketch, and said to Truman O. Angell: "There will be three towers on the east, representing the President and his two Counselors; also three similar towers on the west representing the Presiding Bishop and his two Counselors; the towers on the east the Melchisedek Priesthood, those on the west the Aaronic Priesthood. The center towers will be higher than those on the sides, and the west towers a little lower than those on the east end. The body of the building will be between these and pillars will be necessary to support the floors. Angell then asked about the height, and drew the following vertical section according to Brigham's instructions. The basement 16 feet high to contain the font. The first story twenty-five feet high, leaving room for a tier of rooms above the side aisles about ten feet high below the second floor. The second story like the first. The construction of the roof was left to Mr. Angell. ("Who Designed the Temple?" Deseret News, April 23, 1892, quoted in Forty Years, p. 92)

The source for the quote above is 39 years after the fact, and was supposedly a recollection by Ward, who died in January of 1893, just a few months before the Salt Lake temple was dedicated. 

How are we to know that the above details were not describing a building that was already there? I mean, how hard is it to look at a building and simply describe it? 

To me, this is just like all those polygamy affidavits written by women who claimed to be plural wives of Joseph Smith, published decades after the fact and simply made up to fit a narrative.

Are we supposed to trust sources like this?

Ward's statement is one of the sources used to cite evidence that the foundation was only 16 deep feet. 

Another source is a Deseret News article published contemporaneously in 1854 that quotes Truman Angell describing the physical attributes of the temple as if it was already there, using words and phrases in the present tense such as "are" and "is" instead of will be. 

You can read this strange description in the appendix of the book, Everlasting Spires, by Wallace A. Raynor.

In 1963 the Deseret News published another article contradicting the 16-foot foundation statements it made 100 years earlier. You can read the article below if you enlarge the photo:

The article clearly states the foundation was 30 feet deep, with a photo to prove it.

So who is telling the truth here? The Church Historical Department, the Deseret News from 1854, or the Deseret News from 1963? What sources, if any, can be trusted at all? How deep does the foundation go and what is it really constructed of?

If we want the truth, perhaps we should ask construction workers who have been part of the excavation crews on the Salt Lake temple since 2020. After all, they are just doing a job and have nothing to lose in telling the truth. 

There are two videos where two different construction workers were interviewed, both are worth watching before you read what follows. 

In this first one, produced by Jon Levi three years ago, we can hear Jon questioning the construction worker around the 4-minute mark. The man tells him that the foundation goes down 4 levels, that he's been down there, and that the workers are not allowed to take pictures. During the video Jon's phone experienced what he thought was a jamming signal:

In this second video, produced by Streets of Tartaria, a construction worker, plainly visible in the video, matter-of-factly states that the temple foundation goes down at least 40 feet and that is where they are installing the hydraulics. In the first few minutes of the video you can see the massive hole that was been excavated and its extensive depth. The construction worker is interviewed around the 15 minute mark:

Now that you have seen just a few of the discrepancies and anomalies surrounding the temple foundation, let's dive into the official narrative. 

LDS historians claim that the groundbreaking for the Salt Lake Temple took place on February 14th of 1853. 

On that day we're told that hordes of Mormon pioneers gathered around Brigham Young as he attempted to break the frozen ground with a shovel, and after he finally managed to scoop up a small offering of earth, the crowed was so thick that Brigham had to yell "get out of my way, for I am going to throw this". 

We're told that this small scoop of earth was extracted from the southeast corner after which a prayer was offered by Heber Kimball, who invoked a blessing on the Architect, Superintendent, Foreman, and all other laborers on the temple according to Freemasonic protocols (more on this in part II).

After the crowed dispersed the workers began the excavation in haste, employing the primitive implements of the 19th century: the shovel and pick axe for loosening the rocky soil, baskets and buckets on ropes for hauling dirt out of the hole, and the horse-drawn wagon for hauling off the excavated dirt. 

We're told that 150-200 men and boys worked daily at the site attempting to have it ready to lay the cornerstones at the April conference, just six short weeks later.

The temple, said to have been drawn by Truman Angell, was to be 186-1/2 feet long by 98 feet wide, covering an area of 21,850 square feet or about 1/2 acre. 

As the story goes, the workers did not excavate the entire foundation area at that time, but instead dug four trenches that would form a rectangle around the perimeter, as this was all that would be required to lay the cornerstones and begin work on the sandstone foundation. Curiously, we are never told when or how the rest of the 1/2 acre area was excavated. 

The trenches were no small feat for a group of newly-arrived pioneers who were likely still attempting to feed themselves while building log homes and establishing farms. 

The trenches were dug 20 feet wide and 16 feet deep, with the north-south trenches running 193 feet long and the east-west trenches running 125 feet. According to Henshaw (author of Forty Years) whom I have already quoted above, this would require more than 200,000 cubic feet of earth to be removed from the area, at a rate of 1,900 tons a day (see p.99). 

All of which was hauled off by horse-drawn wagons. 

(How many tons of dirt could be hauled in a single wagon load? And what distanced was it hauled to and stored? What were the conditions of the roads it was hauled on? Mud, slush, snow?)

Keep in mind that this was in February, and as Henshaw points out in his book, the workers had to navigate winter storms through both February and March, enduring daily freezing and thawing cycles. 

Those 150-200 workers would be digging with picks and shovels in frozen ground when they began work in the morning, and by afternoon wagons would have to haul heavy loads on wet, slushy, or muddy roads. 

Why would they even attempt to tackle this project during the winter and early spring months? It really doesn't make any sense at all.

But as always, we're told the pioneers completed the arduous task, and by the appointed time they had the trenches ready for the cornerstone ceremony. 

Meanwhile, the Sharp Brothers had been at their new quarry extracting large sandstone blocks and shaping them into perfectly cut and squared cornerstones, with hand tools. 

The only task that remained was hauling the blocks four miles to the construction site. These blocks, weighing in at 5,400 pounds each, would need to hauled on a wagon pulled by a team of oxen over muddy spring roads. 

Somehow, and we're not told specifically how, only four wagons delivered the massive stones to the temple site just in time for the April conference.

Was it really possible to have dug out these trenches in the allotted time during the muddy spring? This was certainly not plausible for a people who had just arrived a few years earlier to divert all their resources to such a project when they were in all reality going hungry. 

Before you read on to the next section please take a moment and reflect on the massive discrepancy between what the official history claims (16 feet), and what you have seen in the videos above (40 feet). 

It is NOT HUMANLEY POSSIBLE for men with shovels and picks to dig a 40 foot hole in an area covering 1/2 acre in only six weeks. Not then, not today. 

Someone is lying to us. 

Extracting dirt from a hole that deep would've had to be done one small bucket at a time using a windlass with ropes. (A windlass is a device that uses a series of ropes and pulleys to lower buckets into holes. It was widely used during the 19th century). 

It simply would not have been possible to accomplish in a six-week period. 

Also consider the fact that there are tunnels all over under Salt Lake City and specifically under temple square. 

We're told that some of them were constructed in 1960s during a renovation, but the first mention of tunnels actually goes back to 1889, when John Nuttall wrote in his diary about a tunnel connecting the temple to the annex building. 

The second mention came in 1911, when Gisbert Bossard, a Prussian convert, somehow gained access to the temple interior and took dozens of pictures. He claimed there were tunnels running from the temple to both the Hotel Utah and the Sharon building. Read about that here.

Were tunnels under the "defective" sandstone foundation dug out underneath before or after the granite blocks were added on top of the sandstone?  

After the April conference of 1853 and the laying of the cornerstones, we're told that it only took two more months to finish excavating the remaining area under the temple. Which again, would not have been enough time to excavate the forty foot depth (along with tunnels) that we now know the foundation descends to.

Over the next two years the narrative goes quiet, and as far as we know nothing was done except continuing work on the stone wall surrounding the temple block. 

Then in May of 1855, a report was given to Brigham Young, issued by the church office clerks, stating that 100 men were "rolling down large rocks for the temple foundation". 

We are not told how these men accomplished this feat, but somewhere they managed to roll these boulders that two-ton sandstone foundation blocks were cut out of (See, Forty Years, p. 221), right down to temple square. 

In Truman Angell's journal we find a plan to construct a crane to hoist and set these blocks, but whether or not it was ever built is not mentioned (See Everlasting Spires, Kindle Edition, Loc 401).

Miraculously, and without a crane, we're told that by June of 1853 the foundation reached a height of eight feet, and by July it was completely finished, consisting of 101,056 cubic feet and weighing around 7500 tons (Everlasting Spires, Loc 419).

So let's recap. If we combine the official narrative with the modern evidence of a much deeper foundation and interconnecting tunnels, this is what we're left with: 

In only two years an area of 1/2 acre, excavated at least four stories below ground (interconnected with tunnels) with men using only shovels, pick axes, baskets on ropes, and horse-drawn wagons, was filled with massive sandstone blocks that were set as low as forty feet deep and built up to 8 feet above ground level. This is, of course, completely impossible and absolutely ridiculous.

Yet, the LDS Church has tipped their hand. They, and Russell Nelson in particular, must've known that by digging up the foundation of the temple in recent years the true depth of the temple basement would eventually be leaked and revealed. 

But whatever the reasons for the renovation, Church leaders must anticipate that some powerful earthquakes will hit Utah in the future, and this must be an attempt at protecting their infrastructure under the temple, likely consisting consisting of underground prepper bunkers.

Let's get back to the story.  

From 1853 to 1855 there is another lull in the temple construction narrative, and things seem to go quiet again until a very important character enters the story: Master Mason Edward L. Parry. 

We're told that Parry acted as Master Mason on both the St. George and Manti temples, but he first appears in the Salt Lake Temple narrative, working directly under superintendent A.H. Raleigh (Alonzo Hazeltine).

Raleigh is the man blamed for the "faulty" sandstone foundation that we're told had to be replaced when it was uncovered in 1867. 

This is a strange twist in the plot, but every good story that is believable needs elements of diversity, antagonism, or a scape goat to blame the woes of the people on. 

What is baffling is how these two men, Parry and Raleigh, said to have been experts in stone masonry, could have allowed the temple foundation to get so far out of plumb that the entire thing had to be scrapped and replaced. 

A Giant Bubble Off Plumb

Alonzo Raleigh enters the narrative in 1850 when he's made foreman over the public works masons, and disappears 8 years later when Johnston's army moves into Utah to begin its occupation in 1858.

Raleigh was given "bills & specifications for the temple foundation" from Truman Angell in May of 1855, but strangely, we're told that work on the foundation had already begun two years prior and was finished by July 23 of 1855. 

Here is how author Mark Henshaw describes the progress made in those two years:

The stones laid down in those first layers were called ashlars, and each layer was referred to as a course. By Raleigh's calculations, the workers had set down 101,056 cubic feet of ashlars weighing 7,478 tons in total--almost 15,000,000 pounds. They had been cut by hand, hauled by wagon, then laid and cemented in place in each course with mortar made from lime and sand applied between the courses. The top course of ashlars would be cut precisely enough to establish a level horizontal surface on which to put down a layer of smooth flagging stone ten feet wide. It was upon the flagging that the temple's walls would rest. (Forty Years, p. 134)

If we add up what we know about the true depth of the foundation today, the material to fill a forty foot hole would have been multiplied to at least 18,000 tons, a whopping 37 million pounds of rock--"all cut by hand" and "hauled by wagon" of course. 

I don't believe it would have been possible for workmen in the 1850s to lay 7500 tons of material in just two years, let alone 18 thousand tons. What we are reading here is just a story, a story full of unbelievable irony. 

All that toil during those early years of the 1850s--the quarrying of and transportation of multi-ton boulders, the hand drilling and shaping of the massive blocks, the teamsters hauling the material to the temple site on muddy roads, the lowering down of heavy stones into the excavation site without cranes--just plain not possible.

And then we're told that one man, using a faulty instrument, somehow managed to muck up the entire foundation. 

As the story goes, Alonzo Raleigh, construction superintendent and foreman over all masons, refused to use Truman Angell's level, and instead used his own homemade version. 

Here is how the narrative reads:

The sandstone blocks needed to be cut and laid precisely level in the limestone mortar between courses to bear the weight of the granite walls that would be stacked on them. That required the masons to use a level to check the alignment of each stone to keep it in horizontal line with the rest of the stones in the tier. Truman Angell had such a took, known to be accurate. But the masons told Brigham that Alonzo Raleigh, the foreman, had demurred from using Truman's implement in favor of his own homemade--and apparently defective--level. The false readings from the device had led to the stones being improperly laid. Truman confirmed the problem on December 7. Enough dirt had been removed for him to take a measurement of the exposed basement walls, and he found sections that were two inches off level. (Forty Years, p. 221)

I have a little experience with levels. I've installed cabinets and countertops, set tile, framed walls, ran drain pipe for plumbing, poured concrete for shower bases, installed French drains in lawns, and my landscape crews have installed pavers and retaining walls. 

In my professional experience, 1/4" off level is enough to cause a massive problem for a typical job, but 2", well, you have to consciously trying to be 2" off level.

This story is not adding up. 

If this was true, then why didn't Truman Angell, Edward Parry, Daniel H. Wells, Brigham Young, or literally any other mason working on the temple check the stones for level at every course that was laid? 

Why would they chance having to tear out the whole thing and start over? For supposedly skilled artisans said to have built all that they did in Salt Lake City, this story makes no sense at all, and is a total fabrication. 

Here is what the narrative has Brigham Young saying about this problem:

I shall have to take up one tier of rock all over the foundation, for Brother Raleigh appears as though he wished to destroy that Temple...One quarter of an inch settling of that building would crack it from top to bottom... I do not know as Brother Raleigh realizes what he is doing but it appears to me that he is trying to destroy the architecture of that building. (Brigham Young comments to Wilford Woodruff, quoted in Forty Years, p. 222)

To remedy the problem Raleigh told the masons to used wedge-shaped rocks as shims to level the tiers, a makeshift solution that would have ended in disaster as the weight of the building would have crushed the shims and shifted and cracked the stones. 

This doesn't make any sense for an experienced stone mason. There is not much historical information on Raleigh. The Church History Library grants access to Raleigh's log books for masonry laborers on the temple, but not much else. No journals, and nothing on his background in masonry.

Here is where we return to the 1963 Deseret News article (shown at the beginning of this post) that reported that the foundation of the Salt Lake Temple was at least 30 feet below grade, contrary to what historians still claim about the original excavating in the 1850s. 

The article notes that the foundation is multi-tiered, consisting of both sandstone and granite, contradicting the narrative that the sandstone foundation was pulled up, scrapped, and replaced with granite. 

Here are some more photos of the 1963 renovation:

I found that 1963 Deseret News article on the Nigh Unto Kolob blog. The author of the blog quotes yet another article from The Salt Lake Herald, entitled, "Facts About the Temple", and published in 1891. 

Here is what it said:

The Salt Lake Temple foundation is not laid of granite from Cottonwood canon (sic), as has been stated, but is of the same kind of sandstone as the temple block wall foundation--we call it firestone--and has never been disturbed or taken up and relayed as has been stated. (The Salt Lake Herald, October 22, 1891)

This article's claims are interesting. Firestone is not a type of sandstone, it is made of pyrite, a highly oxidative rock that produces a spark when struck against steel. Firestone is not used as a building material because it is highly corrosive.

So what are we now to believe? The official narrative still trumpeted today by apologist historians, or an 1891 article published before the temple was supposedly finished? 

If the LDS Church lied about the excavation and original sandstone foundation being faulty, then what else are they lying about?

Honestly, probably everything. I can't believe anything we're told about this temple. And as you will see, the further we probe into the narrative of this building, the more anomalies we find. 

The author of the blog also made some interesting commentary on the foundation anomalies which are worth repeating here. He begins by quoting an earlier article by the Deseret News published in 1962:

"The story of the foundation and the back-breaking labors of the pioneers who toiled with oxen to haul giant pieces of granite from Cottonwood Canyon quarries to replace an original foundation has been told." 

[Author's commentary] Thus, if there ever was a full foundation of sandstone up the ground level, then the upper 14 feet of that base had to have been removed and replaced with granite. However, the BYU story stated that the temple structure didn't rise to the ground level until 1867, or 10 years after the threat from the U.S. Army. So, this cast some doubt on the full underground base of sandstone ever existing. 

Notwithstanding, it is a fact that some 14 feet to 16 feet of lower sandstone sub-base still remain below ground. The 1963 Deseret News stated that the sandstone sub-foundation covers an area of 4,850 square feet.

The photograph also reveals how layered in blocks and even partially eroded the sandstone sub-foundation appears to have been in 1963. During the 1963 renovation, cement walls and footings were added to replace the previous rocky subsoil. At the same time of the 1963 underground improvements, underground passageways were added. (Is the sub foundation of the Salt Lake Temple composed of granite or sandstone? By blog author Lynn Arave. I recommend reading the whole blog post.)

Here is the photograph Arave is referencing, the one I already shared from the 1963 article. It is worth a second look:

Now compare it with this modern photo of the ongoing temple renovation:

Notice the large concrete pillars on the right and how large they are compared to the excavators. Ask yourself why they would add this surrounding concrete in 1963 (as told by the blogger I quoted) and why they had to do it at that very deep level, far exceeding the original 16 feet we're told was initially excavated in 1853? 

What are they attempting to cover up with that concrete? What is the real depth and size of this temple? Is there some kind of massive underground palace that this concrete is covering? How deep does the temple foundation really go? And what would LDS leaders be using those underground facilities for during all the years since 1853? Was this building repurposed for benign or nefarious designs? 

We all deserve to know the truth, and I hope God will reveal it to us soon. 

In the meantime, let's ponder what Nephi meant when he said that those who teach things like, "I, I am the Lord's" true church, and that "the Redeemer hath done his work, and hath given his power unto men", who "teach with their learning" and say, "hearken ye unto my precept"--are the same men who "seek deep to hide their councils from the Lord" (See 2 Nephi 12:28, RE).

Are they hiding these councils in deep underground facilities under Temple Square? 

Join me soon for part II, where we'll dive deep into the Salt Lake Temple cornerstone ceremony, a Masonic protocol for claiming founded buildings...