To honor Brigham Young’s October 1863 request that the Salt Lake Temple be “built in a manner that it will endure through the Millennium,” a vital milestone on the temple’s seismic upgrade has been achieved.
This milestone is the completion of vertical coring, a meticulous three-year process and the most extensive single activity on site to date. It involved drilling 46 holes through the quartz monzonite walls of the historic house of the Lord, from the tops of each corner of its six towers to the new upper foundations over which the sacred structure now rests.
This update on the Salt Lake Temple renovation project was announced in a Jan. 3 news release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Workers in the vertical coring process used diamond-edged drill bits attached to hollow drill rods 5 feet long and about 2½ inches in diameter. Drill rods were threaded and connected to form what are called drill strings.
Four drills were placed by crane at the top of the temple towers, and more than 2½ miles of stone cores were cut. The drilled holes were kept within a parameter of ⅜ inches for the entire average cored depth of 150 feet.
The drilled holes were reamed to hold bundles of steel posttension cables that connect to the temple’s base isolation system, which helps the Salt Lake Temple to withstand high-magnitude earthquakes.
The cables attach to reinforced steel structures in the towers and roof and are threaded through exterior walls, attached to its new foundation and tightened to half a million pounds of tension.
New statue installed
The second of 14 statues to be placed around Temple Square throughout 2025 and 2026 has been added. The piece Come, Follow Me, created by Ben Hammond, depicts Christ calling two fishermen to become His disciples.
This new statue follows a statue of the First Vision of Joseph Smith, added November 2024, and precedes a dozen more that will highlight key moments in the life of Jesus Christ and in Church history.
“We want to convey to the world that Christ leads His Church today,” said David Hunter — an architect for the Church — in November 2024 about the 14 new statues. “These pieces are designed to share that message with the world.”
Additional Salt Lake Temple renovation work
Seismic work on the temple will continue through the first quarter of 2025 with continued tensioning of seismic systems. Most of the underground reinforced concrete structures for the addition around the base of the temple is scheduled to be completed in this first quarter.
Crews are beginning to finish construction in the two baptistries, the baptistry chapel and the celestial and sealing rooms. Finish work is also happening in the basement level of the expanded north addition. Stone cladding work is being installed at the west entry pavilion on North Temple Street.
Renovations are expanding the temple’s capacity, doubling the one baptistry to two, increasing 13 sealing rooms to 22, and using five instruction rooms to present the endowment separately, rather than progressing through each room. The temple also gains 100,000 square feet with an underground north addition.
Much of Temple Square remains open to the public. The Salt Lake Temple was closed Dec. 29, 2019, to “enhance, refresh and beautify the temple and its surrounding grounds,” said Church President Russell M. Nelson in an April 2019 press conference.
President Nelson recently announced in October 2024 general conference that renovation of the Salt Lake Temple and other areas on Temple Square will be completed by the end of 2026.
