Covering 153,000 square feet and 15 acres of property at its dedication in 1981, the new house of the Lord was designed to have the largest capacity of any temple at that point (25 percent larger than the Ogden and Provo temples).
In a symbolic gesture during the 1979 groundbreaking, President Spencer W. Kimball departed from the traditional shovel method in favor of a hard hat and construction machinery.
