Brigham Young's Prophecy of the Salt Lake Temple Site

In July 1847, shortly after the first pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff visited the site that would become Temple Square. Woodruff’s account places the event on July 26, two days after the pioneers’ arrival, and says Young struck the sagebrush-covered ground with his cane and drove a stake to mark the location for the temple. Another account describes Young stopping between the two forks of City Creek, striking the earth with his cane, and declaring, “Right here will stand the great Temple of our God”; Woodruff then marked the building’s center by driving a stake into the ground. Young said the Saints should be situated to administer the ordinances of the house of God, and later reflected that he had seen the temple in vision five years earlier and had never doubted the site. The location was later associated with the temple dedicated by Woodruff in 1893.