SALT LAKE CITY —The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced the completion of what leaders call a “monumental” process in the ongoing renovation of the Salt Lake Temple. The vertical coring has taken three years to finish and was the most extensive single activity on-site.
Crews reportedly drilled 46 holes through the temple’s granite-like walls, from the tops of each corner of its six towers to the new upper foundations.
Church officials said hollow, diamond-edged drill bits were attached to hollow drill rods about five feet long and two and a half inches in diameter. The drill rods were threaded and connected to form “drill strings.”
Cranes placed four drills at the top of the temple’s towers, a process that reportedly cut more than two and a half miles of stone cores.
The holes were reamed and now house “bundles of post-tension cables,” part of the temple’s “seismic base isolation system,” the church said.
“The steel cables are attached to reinforced steel structures in the towers and roof, threaded through the temple exterior walls and attached to its new foundation, then tightened to half a million pounds,” the church explained. “The tension compresses the historic structure to withstand high-magnitude earthquakes.”
Church officials said that crews are also beginning to wrap up construction in the two baptistries, baptistry chapel, celestial rooms and sealing rooms. The underground addition to the temple has an additional 100,000 square feet. The temple will have two baptistries instead of one and 22 sealing rooms (where marriages occur), up from 13. It will also have five instruction rooms with increased seating space.
The Come, Follow Me statue is placed in the northwest quadrant of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, on December 16, 2024. (Photo: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
A new statue was also installed on Temple Square.
The Come, Follow Me statue located north of the Tabernacle joins the First Vision statue added in November 2024.
More sculptures depicting the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and the restored gospel will be placed around Temple Square in 2025 and 2026.