The Salt Lake Temple VI: A Hollow Shell

 Previously: The Crossroads of the West

At the 1852 LDS general conference, Heber Kimball admonished Church members to go to Manti to claim around 100 abandoned homes. He also said similar opportunities existed in Iron County. (See JD 1:295)

Can you imagine it? Hundreds of abandoned homes in the Utah Territory only five years after the Mormons arrived? Why were so many houses built and abandoned in such a short timespan?

I covered that quote in my post on the Manti Temple, but I bring it up here because in the same conference we're told that both Heber Kimball and Brigham Young deliberated on potential building materials for the Salt Lake Temple. Brigham's comments here are particularly interesting.

Young claimed that he was "a chemist in theory," and that the San Pete rock, red sandstone, and bastard marble or limestone, would all wash away long before "mud or adobes." He then went on to claim that ancient builders used adobes, or "clay mixed with straw," and that Egyptian "monuments, towers, and pyramids," made of the same material, were then still standing (See JD 1:218-220).

Yet ironically, not a single adobe structure supposedly built in Utah is still standing today. The Egyptian pyramids, specifically the pyramid of Giza, were constructed of limestone and granite, not adobes. Structures made of a specific type of fired clay known as terra cotta can last multiple centuries, but it does not contain straw. The Joseph Smith Memorial Building has terra cotta on its facade. 

So why would the narrative have Brigham Young making such a seemingly foolish and contradictory statement? The Salt Lake Temple was, after all, built with granite and red sandstone, not clay mixed with straw. 

I'm beginning to discover a pattern in written history. The stories we are told seem to be full of contradiction and irony, as well as diversity and duality. In my opinion this is by design, with these concepts being written into the historical narratives almost like they were algorithms or code. They appear in many old world building narratives, not just in America, but all over the world.

When something repeats often enough, it can no longer be called a coincidence. 

In this post I'll be covering the construction of the temple up to 1892, just before the final capstone was placed at towering heights of over 200 feet. Author Mark Henshaw claims that before the roof was finished in 1889, the temple resembled "an empty shell" (See Forty Years: The Saga of Building the Salt Lake Temple, p. 525). Can you imagine a massive granite structure with walls over 100 feet tall, with nothing in the interior to hold them together? 

It's certainly plausible that some stone buildings were constructed this way (like a castle for example), with no interior lumber or steel to hold the building together. The walls of the Salt Lake Temple are 6 feet thick at the base and tapered to 3-4 feet thick at the top of the battlements. 

However, if a construction project had a planned interior from the start, with multiple floors, then why would the builders try to insert framed-in floors later? Especially on a structure over 200 feet tall? This would be very difficult to do.  

This claim (that interior floors were added later to the SLT) is reminiscent of the St. George Temple, which as you may recall, was built so hastily that the 80-foot walls began leaning inward for lack of interior supports. Lumber was sourced over 70 miles away in Trumbull, Arizona, and crews couldn't ship it up to St. George fast enough.

As a consequence of this, we're told, the interior floors and supports had to be constructed later while workers simultaneously attempted to straighten 80-foot walls made of stone. The story is ridiculous and hinges upon the miraculous, but in real life, buildings are not constructed this way. 

Interior framing, whether steel or wood, is always constructed simultaneously with exterior walls, and if stone walls are built as stand-alone structures, they are always buttressed with stone supports. The Salt Lake temple was built with buttresses, but they appear decorative and not load bearing. 

If you search for construction photos of the Salt Lake temple (I'll show some later in this post), you'll notice that each phase of construction features a finished granite structure abruptly cut off at the top, with each photo displaying varying stages of progress. You'll notice that the facade is always finished, meaning that the hand-carved granite designs always appear from the bottom going up, even though the top hasn't been completed. 

This is another red flag. 

Buildings are not constructed this way. Facade designs are always done last, after the structure is framed and supported. Yet in the story of the Salt Lake temple, facades were simultaneously finished as the walls of the building rose, and we’re told that the interior was finished in record time.

There is not a definitive timeline in the historical record revealing when the work on the interior actually began. According to some sources (which I will get into in the next post), work on the interior framing began as early as 1889, however, most of the available documents that say anything about the interior claim that the bulk of the work was done in only one year--from April 1892 to April 1893.

Even if floors were framed before 1892, it was still nothing short of a miracle that laborers were able to complete the temple with such incredible workmanship and exquisite detail in only one year. By all rights it should've taken years and years--especially with the limited tools and tech available during the 1890s. 

This is not something our modern civilization could repeat today (it's taken the LDS Church nearly 8 years just to renovate the Salt Lake Temple with modern equipment). 

The capstone ceremony and interior construction will be the subject of the next post. For now, let's unpack the quarries and stone walls. 

Little Cottonwood Quarry

When I think of a quarry, I imagine stone being excavated from the side of a mountain, or layered rock being cut out of the earth, like what's happening in the marble quarry below:

This is not the case with the temple quarry in Little Cottonwood Canyon. The historical account claims that large boulders, some already in a square-ish form, had fallen down from the granite cliffs and were resting on the sides and bottom of the canyon. Quarry workers split these boulders with hand drills and wedges, and then loaded them onto wagons and hauled them 20 miles to the temple site. 

Here is what Little Canyon looks like today. Does it look like the site of a quarry?

I was curious about this quarry, so I planned a trip to Little Cottonwood and checked it out for myself. I hiked along the temple quarry interpretive trail and examined the boulders that still have drill marks on them. However, I didn't find enough evidence to convince me that a quarry actually existed there, at least not in the way LDS historians claim. Here’s a photo I took of a boulder with marks:

Marks in the boulders could have easily been etched-in later, but what I found to be curiously missing is the massive footprint that should have been left from all the buildings that were constructed in Utah out of granite sourced from this canyon. 

According to the account, the temple quarry opened in 1860 and closed in 1892, then opened up again when the Capitol Building and Church Administration Building were constructed between 1912 and 1917. We're told that all the granite collected for these buildings, like the temple, was also taken out of the sides and bottom of the canyon, and never had to be excavated or extracted from steep granite cliffs, but rather picked up off the ground like fruit that falls from a tree.

Because granite was harvested this way, it conveniently left no footprint, which means that we have no physical evidence that a quarry was ever there. 

There are no ruins of any buildings the LDS quarrymen used during the 32 year span the quarry was in use. This is also strange. Especially since the historical record claims that many Church leaders built summer homes in the canyon, and quarry workers lived up there year round. 

The only ruins you'll find there today are the stone remains of a power plant used by the mining companies operating near Alta, a few miles further up the canyon. The power plant was constructed around 1903, see the ruins below:

I hiked to these ruins and found an old wall along the creek that I assumed was used to divert water for the power plant:

Back at the temple quarry trail (a few miles further down the canyon) I found what looked like the ruins of an old dam, again probably tied somehow to the power plant or used as a water source for the town of Granite (a small town at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon). There is no information on these ruins:

LDS historians claim that a cookhouse was built for the quarrymen and that water was diverted from the creek directly into the kitchen for cooking and cleaning. But there are no remains of this wooden structure. The dam above looks too large to divert water into a small kitchen, it makes more sense that a damn this large was used to supply water to an entire town. But again, we don't know, because there is no information explaining the ruins above. 

What about contemporary photographic evidence of the quarry? 

We do have photographs, but like the construction pictures, we get nameless characters appearing in staged positions as shown below:

How did those somewhat square boulders pile up like that? They are massive, and without modern cranes they would not have been able to move them into piles. Did they just find these boulders in this convenient grouping, all ready to be cut and harvested? 

And who were these workers? What were their names? Where are their diaries and journals? Notice that we can't see any of their faces. Is this intentional?

We also have this photo showing a wagon with mules, even though the narrative claims that oxen were used:

We can see two granite blocks loaded on the wagon. Out of the five men, we can only see one face, and he looks confused. We're told that the 20-mile trip from the quarry to the temple site took four days, yet we don't see any camping provisions loaded onto the wagon.

The official story is that the Sharp brothers were given the contract to haul granite in 1860. They had about sixty wagons and ran 15 of them on the road at any given time. They were kept about 1 mile apart and ran both directions; empty wagons loading at the quarry, and full wagons unloading at the temple site.

The grade was steep, and there were ruts and washouts to navigate. Loading only took one hour per wagon. The process was described in 1943 by an unnamed "old timer" who was apparently a boy of 11 when he helped in the quarry. This account is found in the April 1943 Improvement Era:

...we used to load the smaller stones on wagons, but the big ones we hung under them. We'd been having a terrible time. The rocks were heavier than most men thought, and many a wagon broke down. Then one day a brother of Bishop Sharp drove up there with a whole string of heavy freight wagons. Some three and three-quarter Schetler and some high-wheeled government ones. On those high-wheeled wagons they put two long red pine logs and chained them to the front and back bolsters. Then when the men had a rock ready the loaders would put some red pine rollers, about six inches through and five feet long, under this rock, and with smaller poles as levers, they would roll it to where the wagons could be loaded. They would get a wagon astraddle this rock, dig some holes for the wheels, and sink it till the top of the rock touched the bottom of the logs. Then they would chain it in place and when the oxen started, the poles under the rock would roll a little, and as soon as the wheel got out of these holes the rock was swinging free under the logs. ("Temple Recollections," The Improvement Era, April 1943)

Well that's about the most awkward loading method I've ever heard. But remember, it is by design that these narratives are full of seemingly impossible feats. It's all part of the myth and lore that surrounds these stories. A nameless man, who was a mere boy at the time, describes what seems impossible to us, instilling reverence and awe for something that we have no proof actually happened.

The old-timer mentioned oxen. If the Sharp brothers were running 15 wagons at a time than they would have needed at least 60-90 oxen to haul them. However, there are no photos of oxen at the temple quarry or on the trail. One of the few photos showing oxen is found below:

This is the temple construction site in 1877, five years after the railroad was laid in Little Cottonwood Canyon, when we're told that a rail spur was already going directly to the temple site. At this date in 1877, there would have been no need for oxen and wagons. Yet, we don't have any photos of oxen and wagons during the 1860s when we're told there was no railroad. This image is found at the BYU digital collections library. Click here to see the details, including the date. 

Here are a few more photos of men "working" in the quarry from the Church History Catalog website. You can decided for yourself if they look real or not:

When you first enter the canyon, just after you pass the temple quarry interpretive trail, there is a group of boulders on the left that also have chisel marks on them. Here is a photo I took of them:

Don't they kind of look like the boulders from the historic photos above? 

If quarrymen were able to harvest the boulders shown in the historic photos, then why would they never have harvested these? I mean, they are still laying at the bottom of the canyon close to its mouth, making them a much easier harvest then boulders found further up the sides of the canyon. This of course, makes no sense at all. The whole things feels staged to me. 

Now, what about the journals of men working in the quarry? What do we actually have in the historical record? 

Actually, not much. 

Let's start with James A. Muir. 

Well, we don't exactly have a journal from Muir, we have a short life sketch, written down and published in 1945 by Muir's descendants. It's literally only a few typed up pages. It claims that Muir went to work at the temple quarry in 1870 at the age of eleven, but by 1873 "the quarry was forced to close because of financial conditions." 

(After this the life sketch claims that Muir went to work as a teamster hauling dirt out of the ZCMI building basement. Are buildings built and basements added later? This is reminiscent of the Tabernacle basement.)

This is a huge discrepancy in the narrative, because we're told that 1873 was the year the Wasatch and Jordan Valley Railroad was completed, the railway that ran up Little Cottonwood Canyon directly to the temple quarry. 

This line was seven miles long, and was (of course) built during winter. Ground was broken on November 4, 1872, and the last piece of iron track arrived on January 6, 1873 (how did they grade and lay track on steep winter snow pack in a canyon known for dangerous avalanches?). On April 4, 1873, we're told that Brigham Young rode on the train as the first granite block was delivered to the temple on the new rail line. 

Even though Muir's descendants claim that the temple quarry was shut down in 1873, Wallace A. Raynor, author of Everlasting Spires, claims that in 1873 nearly 9 million pounds of granite was delivered to the temple site. Each trainload handled about 60,000 pounds of granite and two trainloads per day were brought down the canyon to Sandy Station, loaded onto the Utah Southern Railroad line, and delivered to the temple. 

I wonder how workers in a quarry that was closed down could keep up with demand? Even if Muir's biographical sketch is wrong and the quarry remained opened during 1873, how did 30-40 men working with hand tools (sledge hammers, stone point drills, slips, wedges, etc.) produce nine million pounds of roughly-shaped granite in a single season? That's around 225,000 pounds of granite per working man. If the working season was 9 months long (omitting winter), that's over 1000 pounds of granite per man, per day (omitting Sundays). Was that even possible? 

Historians also tells us that there was a "temple spur," or rail line built directly from the Utah Central Depot to the temple construction site. This was built in 1872, one year before the line in Little Cottonwood Canyon was completed. The only photo I can find of the temple spur is shown below. 

Are those tracks running through the center of the walled area? If you zoom in on the photo it is very hard to tell what you're looking at.

If you look towards the left at the bottom of the mountains you can see the historic Gardo House, a mansion designed for Brigham Young and constructed between 1873 and 1883. Of course Brigham died before he got to live in the house, but the Historical Marker Database website that displays the photograph above claims that it was taken around 1875. This was, of course, one year before the exterior of the Gardo House was said to be completed, so we shouldn't be looking at a finished building here.  

And here is the only photo we have of an actual train going up the canyon to the temple quarry. Notice it isn't hauling any cars:

Look closer and you'll find anomalies. You can decide for yourself if you think this is real or not. For contrast, here is a historical photo of another narrow-gauge railroad from the 1800s, it's much clearer and you can actually tell what you're looking at:

 

The most famous LDS figurehead connected to the temple quarry was James Campbell Livingston, the Irishman who was given charge of the quarry from 1870 to 1892. Livingston emigrated to Salt Lake City in 1853, and supposedly went right to work for Brigham Young building wagon roads and quarrying rock. In 1868 he had his arm amputated after an explosion with nitroglycerin when blasting rock for the transcontinental railroad, and later wore a hook on his right arm. This, we're told, made him a formidable leader his men greatly respected.

You'd think there be a massive database of archived material available to research on this man, but I could only find an undated biographical sketch on the Church History Catalog website. A paragraph was added in 1933 stating that Livingston's last job was to quarry stone for the Brigham Young Monument at main street and south temple. 

The document was said to be dictated by Livingston towards the end of his life. He only gives us one paragraph describing 22 years of work in the temple quarry:

In the year 1870 I was again sent out with my men to work at the granite quarry quarrying rock for the Temple and from that time until the capstone was quarried I was in full charge of the temple quarry. While quarrying rock for the temple we had a beautiful resort in the mountains known as Wasatch. Here the leading men of the Church had summer homes where they lived with their families during the summer months. I became very well acquainted with these good people and enjoyed their society very much. (James C. Livingston, autobiographical sketch, Church History Catalog)

The "resort" Livingston mentions here was also known as Granite, an unincorporated settlement in the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. People still live there today. However, there are no surviving buildings or ruins from any of these supposed summer homes constructed by Church leaders. The oldest building still standing today is the Granite Chapel, constructed in 1904. View it here.

Next we have Bishop John Sharp. 

Sharp was born in Scotland in 1820. At the age of 8 he apparently went to work in the coal mines (dangerous work for an 8 year old) and in 1847 he met an LDS missionary and was baptized into the Church. He emigrated to Utah in 1850 and went right to work for Brigham Young quarrying rock in Red Butte Canyon. He was made superintendent of the quarry. 

As you may recall, the original temple foundation was made of red sandstone from this quarry, but was later found to be defective and replaced with granite. Read this post and that post to review the discrepancies and anomalies in the foundation story.

As the story goes, most of the LDS labor force in the quarry was assigned as service work by local wards. Just like the railroad story, workers remain mostly unnamed and undocumented. The same story is told for both the Red Butte and granite Temple quarries: around 30-40 men remained on site and worked six days a week for 8-10 hours a day. These men were mostly emigrants from England, Wales, and Scotland, working to pay the Church back for their passage to Utah and earning money to bring their families to the Territory. 

In 1860 John Sharp and his brother were given the contract to haul granite from the new quarry in Little Cottonwood Canyon. We're told that they had sixty heavy duty wagons and that teamsters were assigned service work from various wards. Sources for this information comes from letters of correspondence between Sharp and Church leaders, the temple account book from the Church Historian's office, and the Deseret News. Strangely missing from the official sources are contemporary entries from John Sharp’s journal.

One of the earliest books covering the Salt Lake temple construction and the quarries was written by Wallace A. Raynor in 1861. It was first published as a master's thesis and then subsequently republished in the book Everlasting Spires. You can read the thesis here and check the sources for yourself, neither Sharp's nor Livingston's journal shows up in any of the sources. If you try to search for them on the Church History Catalog nothing comes up.

An interesting sidenote on Raynor is that in his master's thesis he comments in a footnote about a photograph of men working in the temple quarry, stating, "This picture is obviously a posed shot. The quarrymen never worked in such close proximity and please note the hammers" (History of the Construction of the Salt Lake Temple, p. 81). Raynor omits this footnote in Everlasting Spires. 

The photo below is the original one from the master's thesis. Note that some men aren't even holding hammers and appear to be striking the drills with small rocks. Also notice the background, it appears to be a painted backdrop, not an actual shot of real mountains. Look closer and refocus your eyes and you'll notice that the depth perception is off. It feels like we're looking at a display in a museum, with lifeless figurines placed against a two-dimensional background painting. Notice the granite blocks appear suspiciously smooth and homogenous, almost like plaster. Real granite boulders found in nature are jagged, irregular, and chaotic. 

Also notice the familiar shapes of a triangle on the left and a square on the right. Why would they go to the extreme effort of forming such large pieces of granite into these near-perfect symmetrical shapes when they needed to produce much smaller square blocks? Granite blocks are not found naturally occurring in these shapes. 

Is this a Masonic signature, a staged portrait showcasing a compass and square hiding in plain sight?

I find it interesting that the two most famous men associated with the temple quarry have surnames that have are synonymous with cutting stone: Sharp and Livingston. Sharp is Old English and means shrewd, keen, or cutting, and the Scottish name Livingston literally means settlement, or living stone, or in Old English, "in this parish there formerly stood an ancient stronghold."

Is this yet another AI-generated clue in the narrative that Salt Lake City was once an ancient stronghold? 

Next we have Leonard John Nuttall, who actually did mention the temple quarry in his journal, a portion of which has been digitally archived and is available online. Between 1879 and 1892 Nuttall mentioned the temple quarry 8 times. He offers little detail except that some men were in disagreement on wage rates for labor, and that there were some 40 or 50 workers in the quarry on July 4th of 1889 when he and Joseph F. Smith took a train up the canyon. He commented that at 11 AM he and Pres. Smith saw some quarrymen "split open a large rock which was very nicely done". Read the journal here (type "quarry" in the search bar).

Keep in mind here that Nuttall was not a quarry worker, he was a secretary for Church leaders, as well as a member of the Council of Fifty. In other words, he was an insider and, in my opinion, not a man we can trust to tell the truth. 

Again I ask: where are the journals of the hundreds of common men who worked at the granite quarry over the 32 year period? Whoever they are, they remain silent on the matter. 

Finally, we come to William Kuhre, who in 1959 claimed that he was an eleven-year-old boy when he first began to work in the temple quarry. He was 97 years old in 1959 when he was interviewed by Wallace Raynor, which means he would have begun working in the quarry in 1873.

William Kuhre was an orphan. In 1865 the Ute chief Black Hawk led a group of warriors on a cattle raid and slaughtered Kuhre's entire family, sparing the young 3-year old William. Apparently, he was taken in and raised by the Livingston family. Allegedly it was Kuhre who had the dictated biographical sketch of James Livingston in his possession before it was taken into Church archives.

The Church History Library has Kuhre's "Salt Lake Temple Recollections" in its archives. It is a photocopy of a typescript on microfilm. It has been recently digitized and they allowed me to view it after I sent a request. It is undated, and Kuhre gives little detail about the quarrying process. He talks about the Jordan Valley Railroad, the cookhouse, and how the quarry site kept moving further up the canyon. 

Kuhre also reminisces about Old Granite City being full of saloons, stores, and homes, and even quotes an excerpt from James Livingston's life-sketch. He offers a lot of detail on the cookhouse and the food served, but again, little on the quarry work. Kuhre claims that his job was to carry sharpened drills to the quarry workers, and that some boulders for the temple were taken from "well up on the mountain side towards the cliffs" (which contradicts the official narrative). He also stated he was paid $1.50 per day and that the men received $2.50 per day. Other than that, he offered some detail on the Jordan Valley railroad and tells a few stories about some of the men. 

I wonder what happened to the transcript of Raynor's interview of Kuhre in 1959. I also wonder about the veracity of interviewing a 97-year-old man. My grandmother lived to the ripe old age of 96, and although she never had Alzheimer's, she often didn't know who I was during my visits to her nursing home the last few years before her passing. 

Can we trust an undated "recollection", or an oral testimony of a man recalling events that happened 86 years earlier? Where is the contemporary evidence for what Kuhre claimed about the quarry? Did he not write anything down during the 1870s or 1880s when he claimed to be working there? Did he keep a journal? If so, where is it?

This pattern of using post-dated oral and written testimony as primary sources for events that happened decades earlier is commonly used by LDS historians. I know many of you question the affidavits (written 30-40 years later) that were used to frame Joseph Smith with introducing and practicing polygamy in Nauvoo during the early 1840s. Should we not apply that same logic to question other aspects of Church history?

Derricks, Rising Stone Walls, and Air Trains

In 1873, after the railroad up Little Cottonwood and temple spur was said to be completed, we're told that Truman Angell designed a lifting apparatus used to hoist granite blocks up on the rising walls. Essentially, it was a system of four derricks, one for each corner tower of the temple. Raynor describes these derricks in his master's thesis:

When the four new derricks were moved into the Temple building, one was placed in each corner tower. The mast was held upright by guide lines anchored to the ground and to the top of other masts. A long jib pole was connected to the mast level with the hoisting platform. This platform was movable and was either shimmied up the pole or reconstructed as the walls approached the level of the boom...

Evidently, only one hoisting engine was used to operate all the derricks in the early years. A tourist passing through Utah in the fall of 1877 wrote in regards to the Temple that "They build entirely without scaffolding by means of a small portable engine inside, which works lofty cranes with jibs of such length and strength as to pick up the heaviest stones outside and deposit them on the walls." (Raynor, History of the Construction of the Salt Lake Temple, pp. 140-141)

I find it strange that if such an "engine" existed, the only sources describing it are a traveling tourist and the Deseret News (according to Raynor, it was reported on August 17, 1877). Where are the Church financial documents verifying the purchase of this engine? What about contemporary journals of the men who were running and moving the portable engine?

The only other source I found of this "engine" was in Mark Henshaw's book, Forty Years: The Saga of Building the Salt Lake Temple. He describes it as "an eight-horse-power steam engine," and cites as his source a Deseret Evening News article from a year earlier, August 16, 1876, entitled, "The Temple."

What are we to believe? Did this granite-hoisting steam engine really exist? If so, you'd think there would be a photograph of it. Remember, the camera was invented in 1816, long before Utah was settled. Let's take a look at some "construction" photos of the Salt Lake Temple in chronological order and see if we can find this engine. We'll start in 1873:

The steam engine wasn't used until 1876 or 1877, but this photo gives us a starting point. Note the wooden derricks in the upper left. Do you see the two cables that seem to be going up to the left above the derricks? Where are they going? Where one of these cables crosses the tabernacle roof it appears to be partially erased. Has this photo been tampered with? Have those cables been drawn in? Also note the small tower in between the Tabernacle and the building on the left that looks like an obelisk. What is that? 

Here in this 1874 image the derricks are missing, and the blocks seem disorganized compared to 1873. Also note that the building on the left is gone and there is a new building on the right. The wall and trees on the right of the Tabernacle shown in the 1873 photo are missing. Are they actually making progress? And why is there a rope coming straight up out of the roof of the Tabernacle? Notice that the obelisk is also missing. 

Here is an 1876 shot of the derricks, yet no steam engine.

Here we can clearly see the derricks and still no steam engine. The building looks out of proportion, and the derricks have been moved towards the center of the building away from the corners. This contradicts the written narrative (that one derrick was placed in each corner tower). 

Here in this 1878 portrayal we actually see a derrick lifting a block of granite, but again no steam engine. Where would they have kept this engine? Remember, they had to move it from one side of the temple to the other so they could use it with the different derricks. What kind of mechanical apparatus is hidden between what we can see and the bottom of the inside of the temple? Did the steam engine use a system of pulleys somehow attached to the jib and mast of the derrick? However it worked, we're not told, and we're never shown the inside of the empty temple. Shouldn't we find this suspect? 

In this 1881 rendition, we see essentially the same thing, with the temple walls a little higher. The derricks seem smaller, and all of the cables seem suspiciously hand-drawn into this image. Look towards the right of the photo and you'll see a major anomaly: a jagged line that appears to be a conjunction where two photos were merged together. Notice the cable lines at the very top and middle of the jagged edge don't line up. Where are these cables going? Why would they need them to extend that high and far away from the temple?

Finally, we have this undated photo above. Again we can see a single piece of granite being hoisted. We see derricks but no steam engine. And if you look to the left of the image you can see a small derrick (looking far away) on the roof of the tabernacle. What kind of sense does that make? Obviously, this has been drawn in. And again, there seems to be too many cables going in too many directions. What is the logical use of all these cables? 

And the men posing on the top of the temple walls looked staged or drawn in, all wearing nice clothes and top hats, appearing more like curious children at play than actual construction workers.

Another strange claim in the narrative is that when the walls of the temple were around forty feet high an elevated iron tramway was installed in the middle of the empty building. Raynor describes this tramway and what it was used for:

In 1878, when the walls were about forty feet in height, a new hoisting method was tried. The granite stones were loaded on a small truck and were run on an iron tramway along an elevated platform adjacent to and level with with the height of the walls, placed on another small truck and conveyed to the east or west end of the building, and then lifted by the derrick and set in position for the masons. (Ibid, p. 142)

What in the world did we just read?

Train tracks installed forty feet high on an elevated platform in the center of the temple? 

How was this platform constructed and of what material? How did the steam engine hoist the granite blocks 40 feet up and into the rail trucks? How were these trucks conveyed around the building? Did the men have to physically push them around the tracks? Were they electrically powered? Was the steam engine connected to some apparatus that pushed the trucks around the tracks? 

We are not given any details about this mysterious air train. The only source for this story comes from the Deseret Evening News (May 23, 1877); no journals, no photographs, and no financial documents. Can we really believe this story? 

This is not the first time I've heard of a train track being built several stories up inside the skeleton of a building under construction. The same story can be found in the narrative of an Old World cathedral in Salt Lake City: The Cathedral of the Madeleine. Here is an excerpt from a book written on the construction of the cathedral:

...A crane swung the huge stones upward to ever more vertigo-inducing heights, where they were transported to their proper place by carts on a railroad track. (Gary Topping, The Story of the Cathedral of the Madeleine, Kindle Version. Loc 389)

Looks like the AI repeated itself again.

Remember, the Salt Lake Temple was claimed to be a hollow skeleton before 1889, and the only feasible way to build a train track at a height of 40 feet would be to construct some sort of trestle bridge. This seems like a total waste of time and resources when the derricks were already in place and being used to swing the blocks around the walls of the temple.

If this track existed, why are there no photos of it? Why is the only documentation of this train track found in the Deseret News? Where are the journals of the men who built and used this elevated track? Again, we come up empty-handed here. 

Let's move on to the stone masons. 

Shouldn't we be swimming in first-hand contemporary documentation proving that hundreds of skilled masons toiled for forty years on the temple?

Well, as it turns out, we seem to be swimming in an empty pool. 

Tales of Master Masons

The first two master masons we hear about in the story of the Salt Lake Temple are Edward Lloyd Parry and Alonzo Raleigh.

It is claimed that Parry laid the first stone in the basement story under the direction of mason foreman Raleigh. This was done in the N.E. corner on June 18 of 1857. 

The source for Parry's role in the temple comes from a short autobiographical sketch dictated by Parry in 1895. His descendants have a "copy of a copy" of that sketch and recorded it in the book, The Life of Edward Lloyd Parry, published in 2011. There are no contemporary journal entries available from Parry describing his work on the temple.

Alonzo Raleigh was the first foreman over the stonemasons and was supposedly responsible for the original defective foundation. I wrote about that here. There is a digitized journal available from Raleigh that you can read here, but entries about his work on the temple are brief and few. He says nothing about the defective foundation.

Another famous stone mason is James Moyle and his father John Rowe Moyle. There is a story about John losing a leg, being fitted with a peg leg, and walking 26 miles on it to work on the temple (even though he could've easily taken a train). This story has been told in general conference a few times. Supposedly it was John who inscribed "Holiness to the Lord" in the stone above the temple door. Read this blog post to find the inconsistencies in the account. The story about the wooden leg is a reminiscence told by John's great-grandson, decades after the fact. 

James Henry Moyle was the "boss" stone cutter from 1871 until his death in 1890, overseeing the 90 to 150 men working on temple walls each day. He died prematurely before seeing the temple finished, following the pattern of many architects and "master" builders before him. He was only 55 years old. There is no public journal available with entries describing his daily work on the temple during those 19 years. There are "biographies and reminisces" available at the Church History Library, but you have to be onsite to view them.

Next we have Eugene Fullmer. It is claimed that this man helped on the temple during the entire forty years, from digging the foundation, to carving both the cornerstone in 1855, and the capstone in 1892. The temple was his life's work, we're told, although we do not have a personal journal documenting this forty years. We have a single quote from his daughter, Rhoda Jane Fullmer Keaton, claiming the above was true. This comes from an oral history surfacing decades after the temple was finished. Nothing was written down contemporaneously to prove that Eugene Fullmer worked on the temple. The Church published this article with the quote from Rhoda Jane in 1993.

Elias Morris is another man mentioned as a stone mason on the temple. It was Morris, supposedly, who laid the first granite blocks in the walls after the old foundation was taken up. This was done sometime between 1862 and 1863. We do not have a journal from Morris, but he is mentioned in an 1893 Contributor article ("The Salt Lake Temple", I wrote about that here, it's an article that has not been digitized, but it's the oldest comprehensive history of the construction of the temple that we have), the Welch Saints Project, and the Church History Catalog. Most of what we can find on him describes his missionary work, not masonry work on the temple.

Another name mentioned in the Welch Saints Project is Henry Eccles. He is also mentioned in the 1893 Contributor article. Little is said of Eccles except some details describing his pay for masonry work on the temple block. There is no personal journal we can read. I'm not sure if Henry is related to the famous David Eccles Sr., a business magnate in early Utah whose son, Mariner Eccles, helped spearhead the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, and also became the 7th chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. I wrote more about the Eccles family here. David Eccles lived in this Old World mansion in Logan, Utah:

The Contributor article mentions a few other stone masons: Peter Gillespie, Stephan Hales, Alexander Gillespie, Peter Fairclough, Henry Woollacott, Alvin Winegar, William Ward, Benjamin T. Mitchell, and James Standing.

There is little to no information available on these men (except William Ward whom I wrote about here).

And what of the claim that 90-150 men continuously labored on the temple block during those forty years? 

These men were supposedly rough-cutting granite blocks, making and sharpening tools in blacksmith shops, hauling materials around the temple site, constructing derricks and suspended train tracks, moving steam engines around the hollow inside of the temple, and countless other tasks. 

Who were these men? Where are their contemporary journals? Do they exist as more than just a nameless and faceless abstraction?

We may never know.

The Spiral Staircases: A Million Pounds of Granite Enigma

Before we move on to the capstone ceremony and interior in the next post, we need to address the granite stairways. Some things are just too hard for the narrators to explain, and in the case of these stairways, they don't even try. 

There is no construction history of these stairways available, all we get is this description of them published in the 1893 Contributor article:

The winding stairways in the four corner towers are composed of granite steps. There are one hundred and seventy-two in each tower. The stairs are divided at convenient in the ascent by four landings. The steps are built in the walls, a hollow granite shaft being constructed in the center of the tower to receive their inner ends. Each step is six feet long, three inches of either end being fastened in the supporting walls. The width is five inches at the narrow end and twenty inches at the broad end, and the height is six and a quarter inches. 

These steps are cut to conform with the curve and spiral ascent, and are so fastened at the ends in the groove prepared for them as to make it impossible for them ever to yield or slip from their position. The tread projects over the main portion of the step about an inch and a half. The cutting of the stones is accurate, and for uniformity in appearance and substantial construction these spiral stairways are unexcelled in the world. Each step weights over seventeen hundred pounds; the aggregate weight of the steps in the four towers being more than a million pounds. ("The Salt Lake Temple," p. 277, emphasis added)

The article mentions "a hollow granite shaft." Wallace Raynor refers to this shaft as a granite colonnade that "extends from the foundation to the top of the square" (p. 148 of his master's thesis). To find the approximate height of the colonnade, all we have to do is multiply the height of the stairs by the total number: 172 x 6.25 inches equals 90 feet.

Nowhere in the written history or in any documentation do we find how four granite colonnades 90 feet tall were constructed and placed in each tower. There is no mention, anywhere in the historical record, of how each 1,700 pound granite stair was cut, shaped, and hoisted into place in each of the four towers. Even more mysterious, is the fact that the colonnades were hollow. How in the world did stone masons construct a hollow granite shaft upwards of 90 feet tall?

Wallace Raynor also commented on these staircases in his master's thesis. He went to the temple and made personal observations and measurements. He must've been allowed to do so. He offers some details not found in the Contributor article:

In the center of each of the four corner towers there is a granite colonnade which extends from the foundation to the top of the square. The diameter of the colonnade is six feet with a two and one-half feet circular opening in the center. There are one hundred and seventy-two stairs, that wind around each of these granite colonnades to form four beautiful and massive granite winding stairways. 

The steps are imbedded in the side walls of each of the corner towers and are cut so as to conform with the curve and ascent of the newel. Each step has been cut in one solid piece and is five feet three inches long, six and one-half inches high, twenty-one inches wide upon its setting in the inner wall of the tower and nine inches at its niche in the newel, and overlaps approximately one and one-half inch in such a manner that it cannot move or be moved without breaking the masonry. (History of the Construction of the Salt Lake Temple, p.148) 

How was it possible during the 1880s to hand carve a massive granite colonnade 6 feet in diameter, with a 2.5 foot hollow center, extending 90 feet in height? 

This means that the wall thickness of the colonnade was around 3 feet thick. For the stairs to fit perfectly in between the tower walls and colonnade, these granite materials had to be carved in perfect symmetry. To maintain this symmetry all the way up a 90-foot climb would've been extremely difficult with primitive hand tools combined with the propensity for human error.

Although we're not told how it was built, it makes sense to me that the colonnade would have to formed in individual pieces stacked upon another, and then secured with mortar. I'm not even sure how an advanced civilization (with anti-gravity technology) could construct a colonnade this large and move it into place unless it was built in pieces.

Hypothetically speaking, if each piece of the colonnade was 3 feet heigh, this would've required 30 individual pieces for each tower, or 120 pieces total. Carving a square piece of granite is one thing, but to carve a perfect cylindrical stone with an exact cylindrical hollow center with hand chisels would've been quite a feat. And then to repeat the process 120 times making sure each piece matched the rest with precision and exactness would've been, in my opinion, impossible without advanced machinery. 

Just think logically for a moment about the shear volume of granite that had to be carved out of the center of the colonnade. This, in my opinion, would've taken years and years. But we are not given a timeline for these staircases, or even a single word about their construction. All we are given is a description. 

And what was the purpose of these hollow granite shafts extending from the basement to the tops of the walls of the temple? Did they serve some ventilation or drainage purpose? Was it some kind of technology that we are not being told about? Why go through all the work to make these massive colonnades hollow?

One plausible explanation is that these colonnade pieces were constructed off site in a factory with an advanced technology that somehow melted granite down and shaped it into cylindrical form. To maintain the perfect symmetry of the spiral staircases the colonnades and individual stairs would have to be cut out or formed with the same precision we see with modern CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machining used in various industries today (i.e., woodworking/carpentry, automotive parts, medical equipment, electronics, aerospace, etc.).

Could 19th century human hands really maintain the same precision as modern CNC technology?

I, for one, don't buy this story. There is so much we are not being told, and the real question is why--why would they lie about history and claim to have built things they did not build?

What could they possibly have to gain--money, power, control, or something else?

Hiding Behind a Refuge of Lies 

Some time ago Rock Waterman published a post entitled The Drunkards of Ephraim, in which he quoted a chapter from a book written by J.J. Dewey, entitled, Infallible Authority. I'm not endorsing J.J. Dewey or his books, but I find this particular chapter on the Drunkards of Ephraim interesting in light of my current research on the history of Utah.

The phrase the Drunkards of Ephraim was coined by the prophet Isaiah, who in his writing seems to use the past history of Israel as a typology for future prophecy describing the fate of the modern Gentiles and the future gathering of Israel. Isaiah seems to subtly oscillate between the past and future with such ease that it is difficult to know which one he's referring to at any given time. I believe this is why Nephi said that we won't understand Isaiah's prophesies until after they have come to pass. 

But what are to make of the group of people Isaiah calls the "Drunkards of Ephraim" who wear a "crown of pride"? Is he referring to the past religious leaders of the Jews or the modern leaders of the LDS Church? 

Or both at the same time?

Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine. (Isaiah 8:1, RE)

Many Latter-Day-Saints come from the lineage of Ephraim, however, the lay-members aren't wearing any crowns. I believe the "crown of pride" may be referring to some kind of elite blood line found specifically in Church leadership circles. I wrote about the lineage of Brigham Young here.

If the drunkards of Ephraim are the Latter-Day-Saints, including other breakoffs like the RLDS (now Church of Christ) and the Fundamentalists, then how is their glorious beauty a fading flower? And how are the fat valleys (of Utah?) overcome with wine?

Was that "glorious beauty" nothing but a skewed perception of an institution's history? A history full of undocumented stories about toil and sacrifice, impossible construction feats, and the building of a beautiful city in record time? 

Is the "fading flower" describing a history once respected by the masses but now being discovered for what it really was?: the abuse of women in the polygamous system, the murders committed by Brigham Young's hired henchmen, the covering up of crimes like pedophilia, the hiding of history that isn't "useful" to the Church authorities, etc.

A few verses later Isaiah calls out the wicked religious rulers of Jerusalem, and then seamlessly transitions into a future prophecy targeting another group of people who make lies their refuge:

Wherefore, hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men that rule this people which are in Jerusalem. Because you have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us, for we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood have we hidden ourselves--therefore, thus says the Lord God: Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believes shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet; and the hail shall sweep away the refuges of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place... (Isaiah 8:4, RE, emphasis added)

Isaiah turns his attention to the future Zion, the place of the New Jerusalem, where the foundation stone, the true cornerstone, will be Jesus Christ. Here in this city, "judgment will be laid to the line, and righteousness to the plummet", a phrase used by Brigham Young right before the 1858 Mormon War broke out.

Young did not mean what Isaiah meant. He used the phrase as a threat to those who might apostatize from Mormonism--from his own dictatorship. But we've also seen the phrase used in Freemasonry, sometimes in connection with the ritualized cornerstone ceremony.

Each building narrative has a story about a cornerstone ceremony, always performed at high noon, the same time when Hiram Abiff, the mythic hero of Freemasonry, was murdered by the three ruffians in Solomon's unfinished temple. 

This is not a coincidence. It is my belief that it was Abiff who is being honored in these rituals that were performed on early Utah temples, not Jesus Christ. Isaiah is setting the record straight. He is telling us that the cornerstone is symbolic, not literal, and that it represents Jesus Christ. He is the sure foundation, not some building, and not some Masonic myth with esoteric ties to ancient Mystery Schools.

More importantly, Isaiah tells us that at some future point the refuge of lies shall be swept away, exposing the falsehoods of those in power. This is not something any of us can do, it is the Lord's work, and it cannot be hastened. He will do it in His time and in His way.

Join me next time for a deep-dive into the capstone ceremony and history of the construction of the temple interior--or the lack thereof.