On Saturday, Aug. 23, ground was broken for the Vancouver Washington Temple, which will be both the southernmost and westernmost house of the Lord in Washington.
It will be the fifth house of the Lord in the state, one of six announced, under construction or operating, and will be the second temple in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area, which straddles the Washington-Oregon state line.
Presiding over this groundbreaking was Elder Mark A. Bragg — a General Authority Seventy who served as North America West Area president until Aug. 1.
Ground was broken for the Vancouver temple the same day as the groundbreakings of the Tampa Florida and Brazzaville Republic of the Congo temples. Information about the ceremonies was published in an Aug. 23 news release on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
In his remarks to the congregation, Elder Bragg testified that “the house of the Lord is a monument of faith and hope in Jesus Christ. Without Him and without the exalting ordinances of the temple, we are left alone, without hope of a glorious life to come in the presence of a loving Heavenly Father.”
To illustrate this point, he explained hope that sprouted through the devastating 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, about 40 miles northeast of the temple site.
After the volcano erupted, the surrounding plants were burned or buried under pumice. The prairie lupine plants, however, were able to grow in the pumice — and when they died, other plants could grow in the soil left by the lupines. Hope and beauty have returned to the land.
“Without Christ, all would be grayscale,” said Elder Bragg. “All would be for naught. Life would end in death, with the body buried with no hope of resurrection, just darkness being forever separated from our Heavenly Father. But with Christ, there is life. As we live in Christ, there is hope. He died that we might live again.”
In his dedicatory prayer on the site, Elder Bragg pleaded that the site be a place of peace and light in a darkening world.
He prayed, “We stand on ground that will soon be hallowed, where heaven will meet earth, where sons and daughters will kneel in covenant and where Thy Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, will be honored in every stone, every ordinance and every whispered prayer.”
About this temple and the Church in Washington
On Oct. 1, 2023, President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Vancouver, Washington, one of 20 temple locations he identified in that general conference. This was the third announced for Washington since 2019, one of six total temples operating, under construction or in planning stages in the state.
Planned as a multistory building of approximately 43,000 square feet, the Vancouver Washington Temple is being built on a 15.11-acre site at the northwest corner of the intersection of SE 20th Street and SE Bybee Road in Camas, Washington, just east of Vancouver proper.
Washington is home to four operating houses of the Lord: the Seattle (dedicated in 1980), Spokane (1999), Columbia River (2001) and Moses Lake (2023) temples. The Columbia River temple is in Richland, of the Tri-Cities area.
The Tacoma Washington Temple, announced in 2022, is currently in its planning and design phase. Site plans were released in September 2024.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Washington dates back to 1854, when four missionaries serving in California were sent into the Washington and Oregon territories. Enough converts joined to create a congregation just north of present-day Vancouver along the Lewis River, a tributary of the Columbia River.
Many Latter-day Saints helped with the 1880s railroad construction of the Northern Pacific Oregon Short Line in Washington. In 1930, Church membership in the state totaled 1,900 in eight congregations, with chapels in Seattle, Spokane, Olympia and Everett.
The state is now home to more than 282,000 Latter-day Saints in more than 470 congregations.
