St. George Temple Foundation — The Cannon Pile Driver Miracle (c. 1871)

During early construction of the St. George Temple (c. 1871–1874), the builders—under the direction of Brigham Young and local leaders in the St. George community—encountered a serious foundation problem at the southeast corner of the site: a swampy alkali seep and high water table (an underground water bog) that threatened to prevent the massive stone structure from being supported. Contemporary and later accounts record that the St. George pioneers located an old Mexican War–era iron cannon that had been brought to Utah. According to Ella J. Seegmiller’s records and other reminiscences, this roughly 1,000‑pound iron piece was repurposed as a makeshift pile driver. The cannon was filled with lead, rigged to a derrick, and repeatedly dropped so that its weight would crush and drive large volcanic rocks into the boggy, swampy ground until a solid foundation was formed. Other retellings describe the pioneers using the cannon to hammer and crush massive volcanic rock into the marshy earth, producing a stable foundation where the soft, alkali ground had prevented progress. Witnesses and later historians have described the discovery and perfect utility of the cannon at this crisis moment as a remarkable, providential intervention that allowed the first temple in the West (the St. George Temple, the first in the Utah territory) to be completed; some accounts note that this foundation solution has supported the temple for over 150 years.