Brigham Young — The Vision of the Temple Site

Before construction began, Brigham Young reportedly described seeing the completed St. George temple in a vision. When he arrived at the site in St. George, he pointed to a specific spot in the lower valley swamp and stated that he had seen the temple standing there. Despite the protests of architects and local leaders who preferred higher, drier ground to avoid the 'saleratus' bog, Young insisted on the location, claiming the spot had been dedicated by ancient prophets and that he had seen it in vision. This led to the difficult but ultimately successful engineering feat of the pile-driven foundation.

Recording note: No verbatim first-person text of this vision survives in public archival sources. The account comes through southern Utah historians — it is related in Miller's Immortal Pioneers and Andrew Karl Larson's I Was Called to Dixie — and through interviews conducted at the St. George Temple Visitors' Center, where the story has long been shared with visitors as evidence that the temple site was divinely designated.