The stake that pioneered the family home evening and seminary programs in the Church is now 100 years old.
The Salt Lake Granite Stake was first organized as the Granite Stake on Jan. 28, 1900, with Frank Y. Taylor as the first stake president.
The stake's centennial was observed the evening of Jan. 29 at the historic Granite Tabernacle in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake City. A one-hour pageant preceded an open house and reception for former stake presidents, which include Elder Spencer H. Osborn, who later served as a member of the Second Quorum of Seventy. President Hugh B. Brown, later first counselor in the First Presidency, is among the former stake presidents now deceased.
Through the media of slides and video, live music and dancing, key events and circumstances in the history of the stake were depicted in the pageant. For example, a narrator recounted: "In the fall of 1912, 70 teenagers gathered for daily religious instruction in a small, red-brick building near Granite High School. At that time, the Church's first seminary students, members of the Granite Stake, couldn't have known that they were part of a historic event marking the beginning of a religious education movement that would, by the end of the century, reach 144 nations of the world and have an enrollment of 644,000. Back when seminary began, leaders of the Granite Stake started the program as an experiment. The stake leaders worried about teenagers who were making decisions that would affect the rest of their lives and were left without religious instruction. There is a strength that comes to young people from being together."
Other Church programs that got their start in the Granite Stake were highlighted, including family home evening, which was begun in the stake by President Taylor and, in 1915, adopted Churchwide; the "merry-go-rounds," which were a forerunner of the "road shows" and other youth drama activities that are still held in some stakes of the Church today; and the M-men and Gleaner program, which was later adopted throughout the Church and served a function that is filled today by the Young Single Adult program.
The sugar factory, which was built to manufacture sugar from beets, was mentioned, as were other industries in the area of Granite Stake: molasses, alfalfa, paper, woolen mill, bucket-churn-tub-and-barrel factory; woolen and carding mill, and glass.
One of the earliest stakes in the Salt Lake Valley, Granite Stake encompassed a large area that is now covered by many newer stakes. (Please see map on this page contrasting original with current stake boundaries.)
Briant Carter, chairman of the centennial, said a centennial history is being prepared and will be distributed at the next stake conference in June.
