This early period left behind an unusual architectural legacy. Some Latter-day Saints did not follow Brigham Young to Utah but returned instead to Kirtland and reclaimed the temple. Others started buying plots of land in Independence, seeking to make use of the temple site Joseph Smith had dedicated. In 1994 the Community of Christ, one of three churches that own part of the original site, built a temple there. Designed by Gyo Obata, the Peace Temple features a 195-foot spiral spire reminiscent of a nautilus shell. Meanwhile, beginning in the 1960s, the Utah church began acquiring, restoring, and rebuilding historic properties in Nauvoo, where the Community of Christ also owns multiple sites, including Joseph Smith’s former home. Working together, the two churches have turned Nauvoo into a Colonial Williamsburg–style destination for Mormon tourists, where missionaries in 19th-century costumes tell stories from early Church history. In 1999, spurred by a large anonymous donation and the rediscovery of William Weeks’s original drawings, the LDS Church rebuilt the Nauvoo Temple.
Brigham Young’s vision of the Promised Land as not just a City of Zion, but the entire American continent, gave an explicitly religious pretext to western expansion and settlement. Within days of arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, he chose a temple site and laid out a city around it. A stream of Mormon settlers was sent to establish a chain of cities and towns across the West, reaching as far south as San Bernardino, California. Many of these outposts began as forts to subdue or expel the Shoshone, Ute, and Paiute Natives who already lived there. In all the settlements, the Mormons built chapels; in some of the biggest, they built tabernacles to hold large conferences; and in a few centrally located spots, they built temples.
If the temples Joseph Smith saw in his visions looked like New England churches, what Brigham Young envisaged for Salt Lake City was something different: six towers, representing the offices of the priesthood, were made of granite blocks hauled from the Wasatch Mountains 20 miles away, and a sermon’s worth of cosmological symbols were carved into the facade. The temple was conceived as a literal fulfillment of prophecy from the Book of Isaiah: “In the last days … the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains.” Young appointed his brother-in-law Angell as Church Architect. It took 40 years to build the Salt Lake structure. During this time, Angell, assisted by his son Truman O. Angell Jr. and by William Folsom, oversaw the completion of three more temples in Utah.
These pioneer-era temples all have a fortresslike presence, with stone towers and crenelated roofs, a symbolic refuge from a threatening world. They are not hidden retreats, though, but rather architectural beacons that dominate their surroundings. The whitewashed sandstone temple in St. George, the first one completed in Utah, in 1877, stands in stark relief against the red rock hills of Utah’s southern desert. Its interior is finished in the style of a Victorian palazzo, with plaster and woodwork made by craftsmen converts who emigrated from England. The towers of the Manti temple, also in Utah and completed in 1888, can be seen from across the Sanpete Valley.