Temple a crowning achievement

"I've never seen anything that elicited more excitement than this announcement," he said during groundbreaking ceremonies in October 1999. "It scared me almost."

President Hinckley then mentioned his father's suggestion that the temple be rebuilt in Nauvoo, in western Illinois along the Mississippi River. However, "the church didn't have a lot of money in those days," President Hinckley said in one interview. "That was just coming out of the Depression.... They declined it."

But the idea lingered.

The $23 million reconstruction was largely underwritten by donors, "those who love the Lord and love this work," he said.

The project was, in effect, a re-creation of the original, on the same location and structural footprint, with nearly the same height and exterior appearance. The interior, although having many harkenings to the past, houses a modern, functioning LDS temple.

"The rebuilding of the Nauvoo Temple will bring back a clear and vivid reminder of what Nauvoo was. Nauvoo was a prosperous and great city," President Hinckley said.

The original five-story temple was the church's second (the first was in Kirtland, Ohio) and the first where members could perform baptisms, marriages and other sacred temple ordinances. The temple in 2002 became the 113th. Now there are 124 operating temples.

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From Deseret News and Church News archives