A Saturday, June 6, groundbreaking date has been announced for the Missoula Montana Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Presiding over the ceremony will be Elder José A. Teixeira, a General Authority Seventy and president of the Church’s United States Central Area.
Information about the groundbreaking was first published Monday, April 13, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
As previously announced, this house of the Lord in Missoula will be a single-story building of approximately 19,000 square feet.
The sacred edifice will be built on a 5.08-acre site at the corner of Old Bitterroot Road and Lower Miller Creek Road, Missoula, in western Montana. An ancillary building is also planned for the site.
Missoula’s groundbreaking will add to two other temple milestones that weekend in the Western United States: the following day, June 7, will mark the dedications of the Willamette Valley Oregon and Yorba Linda California temples.
About the Missoula temple, Church in Montana
On April 3, 2022, then-Church President Russell M. Nelson announced this house of the Lord for Missoula, Montana. It was one of 17 temple locations he identified in that general conference, including one in the adjacent state of Idaho, for Montpelier.
After it’s built and dedicated, the Missoula temple will join two operating houses of the Lord in Montana: the Billings Montana Temple, dedicated in 1999, and the Helena Montana Temple, dedicated in 2023.
The Church’s first branch in Montana was established in 1895, in Lima in the southwest area of the state, and the Montana Mission was organized the year after. The first stake, in Butte, was created in June 1953.
By the end of the 1920s, the Church in Montana had grown to 10 branches and a membership of 1,181. Membership increased to 5,210 in 1940, then 6,416 in 1950.
Today, Montana is home to more than 52,000 Latter-day Saints across 140 wards and branches.
