Tarleton Lewis — Inspired Engineering of the St. George Temple Foundation

During the construction of the St. George Temple in the early 1870s, Tarleton Lewis served as a foreman and master mechanic. The builders encountered significant difficulty with the marshy, unstable ground of the temple site. Under the direction of Brigham Young and with the technical leadership of Lewis, the workers utilized a unique solution: they repurposed a heavy iron cannon from the Mexican War as a pile driver to pack the foundation with volcanic rock. Lewis and his fellow laborers felt that the successful stabilization of the massive structure on such poor soil was a result of divine inspiration and the 'spirit of the work' guiding their engineering decisions to ensure the temple's permanence.