Dedication, open house dates set for Deseret Peak Utah Temple (2024)

The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced the dedication and open house dates for the Deseret Peak Utah Temple in Tooele, Utah.

The Deseret Peak temple will be dedicated on Sunday, Nov. 10, with the dedicatory sessions to be broadcast to all units in the temple district.

A public open house is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 26, through Saturday, Oct. 19, excluding Sundays and excluding Saturday, Oct. 5, for general conference. The temple’s media day will be Monday, Sept. 23, with invited guests touring the temple Tuesday and Wednesday, Sept. 24-25.

Located on a 17.98-acre site in northwest Tooele, the three-story temple is approximately 70,000 square feet and features a central tower, cast-stone exterior and copper shingles. An adjacent 20,000-square foot meetinghouse has also been built at the site.

More details about the temple dedication — including session times and the assigned presiding Church leader — will be announced later.

The dates were first published Monday, June 17, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

The Church has 350 total temples dedicated, under construction or announced and in planning. The total includes 195 dedicated temples, with five other temples scheduled for dedication in either September or October, ahead of the Deseret Peak temple’s Nov. 10 dedication.

Deseret Peak temple timeline

Announced during the April 2019 general conference by President Russell M. Nelson, the temple was initially known as the Tooele Valley Utah Temple. Five months later, on Sept. 25, the first temple location was formally identified in the nearby community of Erda, Utah.

A year after the temple announcement, an exterior rendering was published on April 7, 2020, with interior design renderings following later that month.

In May 2020, the Tooele County Commission approved a recommendation by Church officials to rezone 167 adjacent acres to a planned community zone, with the plan to include 32 acres of open space, walking trails, parks and more than 400 residences.

Some local residents voiced concerns about the high density of the proposed project and impact on the small, rural community of Erda. After the County Commission approved the rezone, some residents launched a petition to force the matter to be decided by a public referendum, which couldn’t be done until June 2021. In August 2020, the Church withdrew its community development plans.

In an Aug. 18, 2020, letter, the First Presidency wrote: “We acknowledge the efforts of those who have raised questions and sincere concerns about the Tooele Valley temple project, including the residential development surrounding the temple. There is a sincere desire on the part of the Church to avoid discord in the community.

“Therefore, regardless of the outcome of a pending signature-gathering effort, we have determined to withdraw our rezoning request for the residential portion of the temple project.”

On Jan. 19, 2021, the First Presidency announced the temple’s new Deseret Peak name and new location — west of the intersection at 2400 North and 400 West in Tooele, about 2.6 miles southwest of the previous location.

Construction began following the temple’s May 15, 2021, groundbreaking, with Elder Brook P. Hales, a General Authority Seventy, presiding at the event and offering a prayer dedicating the site and construction process.

The Church and its temples in Utah

Utah is home to both the Church’s global headquarters and to nearly 2.3 million Latter-day Saints, who account for approximately two-thirds of the state’s population of 3.4 million people.

The Deseret Peak temple is one of the Church’s 30 total houses of the Lord in Utah and will be the 23rd dedicated temple in the state, including four this year. Others dedicated (with the year of dedication in parenthesis) are the St. George (1877), Logan (1884), Manti (1888), Salt Lake (1893), Ogden (1972), Provo Rock Canyon (1972), Jordan River (1981), Bountiful (1995), Mount Timpanogos (1996), Vernal (1997), Monticello (1998), Draper (2009), Oquirrh Mountain (2009), Brigham City (2012), Payson (2015), Provo City Center ( 2016), Cedar City (2017), Saratoga Springs (2023), Orem (2024), Red Cliffs (2024), Taylorsville (2024) and Layton (2024) temples.

Two are currently under renovation — the Salt Lake and Provo Rock Canyon temples.

Five other temples are under construction or have had ground broken (groundbreaking months are in parenthesis): the Syracuse (June 2021), Lindon (April 2022), Smithfield (June 2022), Ephraim (August 2022) and Heber Valley (October 2022) temples. Two other temples were announced in April 2024 general conference and are in planning — for Lehi and West Jordan.