She and her siblings had played on the land and remember picking tomatoes in the field that Alma had inherited from his father. "That's where I taught my kids to ride horses, and there used to be great pheasant hunting," on the property her family had dubbed "the other place," she said.

Over the years, as development was moving toward South Jordan, family members and developers tried to buy the land, but her parents declined to sell. One day in 1977, Alma Holt was in the Salt Lake Temple thinking about how long the line was to do ordinance work, she said.

Driving home that day, he "felt impressed" to call President Kimball and offer to donate his property so the church could build a temple, she said. There had been local speculation that the church was considering a site in Sandy, she remembered.

A few days later, President Kimball came to tour the property, and church survey crews then followed. On Feb. 3, 1978, the announcement was made that the church would build a temple there.

Foreman remembers her father visiting the site every day and watching the construction closely. The property was frequently visited by groups of Latter-day Saints who would "spread blankets on the ground and hold meetings or firesides there" near a sign announcing the project, with the skeleton of the structure in the background. President Kimball returned to the site on June 9, 1979, for groundbreaking ceremonies, and Foreman remembers him in a hard hat, climbing aboard a bulldozer to scoop the first shovel of earth.

More than 568,000 people attended the open house in September 1981, and another 160,000 attended several dedicatory sessions that ran from Nov. 16 to Nov. 21, 1981. With more than 148,000 square feet of floor space, it is the faith's fourth-largest temple.

Though the site for the new temple announced Saturday has yet to be named, speculation has no doubt begun as local Latter-day Saints look forward to another building in which to perform their most sacred ordinances.

President Hinckley also announced plans Saturday for a new temple in Twin Falls, Idaho, to serve the "thousands of members who live between Idaho Falls and Boise." Idaho has the third-largest LDS membership of any state, outranked only by California — where the ground for the Sacramento Temple was recently broken — and Utah.

The announcement brings to 130 the number of LDS temples either currently in use, under construction, or in the planning stages.

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E-mail: carrie@desnews.com