NAUVOO, Ill. — Three weeks into the public open house for the new Nauvoo Illinois Temple, the office of tourism in Nauvoo wants to make three things known: first, there is no flooding in Nauvoo; second, there is plenty of food; and third, there is plenty of parking.
Meanwhile, some Illinois auto license plates have been seen around the state that bear the image of the new temple and the dates of the open house.
In Nauvoo, Joseph Johnstun, director of the Office of Tourism, said his two-person office has been receiving inquiries from potential visitors concerned about reports of flooding in some locales along the Mississippi River.
"The closest we came to flooding was 4 feet below flood stage," he said. "Because of how Nauvoo is situated, we rarely have any problems with flooding."
Even in the record year of 1993, when the "City of Joseph" pageant was canceled due to flooding, roads to and from Nauvoo were never closed, said Brother Johnstun of the Nauvoo Ward.
His office has been fielding calls from people planning to visit Nauvoo. He said Nauvoo has only one national restaurant chain, but there are a number of restaurants around town, including the Nauvoo Dairy Sweet. "They even have a mural on their back wall of historic Nauvoo that one of the senior missionaries serving here had begun painting," he said. "He had plans to expand it to two of the other three walls. But the end of his mission came, and he was released. He passed away before he could return to finish the mural."
Parking continues to be plentiful so far, Brother Johnstun said, adding that he has not seen the new parking terrace the Church constructed just to the south of the temple filled a single day. (Open house visitors are directed to specifically designated parking areas, from which they are shuttled to the Joseph Smith Academy building, where the temple tours begin.)
"We as the city of Nauvoo are very grateful to the Church for reconstructing this temple," he said. "And we're also very happy about how smooth everything has been going. All of the business owners are very, very happy that they're getting the chance to ease into the open house rather than having the floodgates opened and people rush here all at once. It has been very smooth and very well organized. R.J. Snow of Nauvoo Restoration Inc. has been wonderful to work with."
Across the state in Champaign, Kingsley Allan, former stake mission president and now high councilor with responsibility over missionary work in the Champaign Illinois Stake, has initiated his own project to publicize the temple open house. He followed the necessary procedures to have the state manufacture 600 official Illinois auto license plates that bear the image of the temple and give the originally scheduled dates of the open house. (By the time the open house period was expanded, it was too late in the process to change the open house dates appearing on the plates.)
He got the idea in 1998, when he observed and learned that the state as a service manufactures "special-event license plates" — valid for a limited time — at the behest of various groups. It occurred to him that a license plate publicizing Nauvoo as a tourist attraction might be appropriate.
Then, in 1999, came President Hinckley's surprise announcement that the temple would be reconstructed. Brother Allan suggested the license plate idea to his stake leaders who forwarded it along priesthood channels to the area presidency. Brother Allan was given the go-ahead to proceed with it as a private venture. He obtained enough advance interest to assume the financial risk to have 600 sets of the plates made. He also measured preferences between two design ideas, one being the temple sunstone, and the other being the line drawing of the temple itself distributed by the Church. The latter seemed the most popular, and he went with it.
The plates have been displayed on autos since April 20. All 600 sets have been sold for the manufacturing cost plus a bit extra to cover cost of publicity. Brother Allan, whose profession is geographic information systems manager for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, made a map showing locations where the plates have been purchased. "It's fun to see them spread across the state," he said.
He was also gratified at stake conference on May 19 to see 48 of the license plate sets on vehicles in the parking lot. And while working as a volunteer at the temple open house recently, he was delighted to see cars from across the state bearing the plates.
"We look forward to using the plates as a means to get people to think and ask about the temple open house," he said. He shared a personal experience in which he went to an architectural salvage store on business one day recently. A man in the store followed him out to look at the license plates. Brother Allan realized that the people who frequent the store might be interested in the temple as a reconstruction of a historic edifice. That prompted him to take into the store some copies of the newspaper advertising supplement about the temple produced by the Church Public Affairs Department. The store owners cheerfully agreed to let him place the copies on the counter.
"I hope everybody who has these license plates has similar experiences," he said.
The temple open house continues through June 22, followed by 13 dedicatory sessions June 27-30. Tickets to the open house are obtainable for free on the Church web site, www.lds.org, or by calling the toll-free line, 1-800-537-6719. As of May 20, the number of visitors who had toured the new temple was 89,920, according to the Temple Department. It is expected that some 350,000 will have toured the temple before the open house period is over.
