We visited the Reno Nevada Temple on Day Four of our California Temple Trip. In the morning we were at the Oakland Temple and in afternoon we visited the Sacramento Temple. While we were in the temple darkness fell and allowed for a few night shots. We stayed overnight in Reno and traveled home the next day.

Click on the images to enlarge.

The Reno Nevada Temple is the 81st operating temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The first temple in Nevada was built in Las Vegas in 1989. The Reno Nevada temple was dedicated in 2000. It serves over 25,000 Latter-day Saints in the area.

Over the years, figures of the angel Moroni have become more robust as sculptors have added muscle tone and bulk to the figure. While sculpting his version of Moroni, Karl Quilter used human models to help him accurately shape muscles and correctly depict a body standing atop a ball. (New Era)

The groundbreaking services were held on July 24, 1999. After completion but before it was dedicated, the temple was opened to the public. President Thomas S. Monson, First Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church, dedicated the Reno Nevada Temple on April 23, 2000.

The Reno Nevada Temple has a total floor area of 10,700 sq ft, two ordinance rooms, and two sealing rooms.

Jake and Rick outside the Reno Temple

Photos by Rickety. Text from Wikipedia.

We visited the Sacramento California Temple on Day Four of our California Temple Trip. In the morning we were at the Oakland Temple and late afternoon we traveled to the Reno Temple. The darkening clouds at Sacramento invoked the reassurance of the temple being a refuge from the storm (and made for some fine photographs).

Click on the images to enlarge.

Jake and Rick outside the Sacramento Temple

The First Presidency of the Church announced on April 21, 2001 that a temple would be built in the Sacramento area. This temple is the seventh built by the Church in California, more than any state except Utah. The Sacramento California Temple serves a growing membership which totals approximately 80,000 in the area.

Plans for building the temple were met with little resistance by the surrounding communities and government bodies. Many were glad for the building of the temple in the area because it would improve the land, and bring visitors and money into the area. There was some concern about the height of the temple spire and the Church agreed to lower it twenty feet.

On August 22, 2004 a site dedication and groundbreaking ceremony were held. Church President Gordon B. Hinckley presided at the ceremony and gave the site dedication prayer. Other prominent Church members from the area also attended the groundbreaking and site dedication, including Congressman John Doolittle.

The site for the temple, located in Rancho Cordova, includes 46 acres and overlooks the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The temple grounds were designed to fit in with the surrounding landscape. The temple design is slightly larger than most of the temples currently under construction. The temple has a total of 19,500 square feet, two ordinance rooms, and four sealing rooms.

Note the lightning rod on Moroni's head

At many of the temples we visited Jake took photographs of the flowers. He will probably post the best of them once he gets his homework done.

An open house was held July 29-August 26, 2006, to allow the public to tour the temple prior to its dedication.

The Sacramento California Temple was dedicated on September 3, 2006, by President Hinckley. The dedication was given in four sessions to allow all those who would like to attend the opportunity to participate. The night before the dedication, a cultural celebration was performed at the ARCO Arena.

Photos by Rickety. Text from Wikipedia.

We visited the Los Angeles California Temple on Day Three of our California Temple Trip. It was closed on the day we visited. Later that day we went to the Fresno Temple. After Fresno we journeyed to Oakland to stay overnight, ready to visit the Oakland Temple the next day.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Missionaries working on the temple grounds

The Los Angeles California Temple is the tenth operating and the second-largest temple operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When it was dedicated in 1956, it was the largest temple of the church, later surpassed by the Salt Lake Temple with its additions and annexations. The grounds includes a visitors’ center open to the public, the Los Angeles Regional Family History Center, also open to the public, and the headquarters for the Los Angeles mission.

The Los Angeles Temple was announced when the church purchased 24.23 acres from the Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company on March 23, 1937, by president Heber J. Grant. Construction was to begin soon thereafter, but financial difficulties relating to the Great Depression and World War II delayed the groundbreaking until 1951. The temple plans were revised at this time to include a priesthood assembly room, an unusual feature in temples built after the Salt Lake Temple. It was also expanded to accommodate an unprecedented 300 patrons per session.

This was the first temple with an angel Moroni statue since the Salt Lake Temple. When the statue was installed, it faced southeast as the temple does. It was later turned to face due east at the request of then Church President David O. McKay.

This was the last temple designed to use live actors instead of a film to present the endowment. The motion-picture presentation soon replaced the live actor presentation, and the progressive presentation (in which patrons moved from one room to another) was replaced with stationary ordinance rooms (i.e., patrons remained in a single room for the entire ceremony). In 2003, the temple reverted to a progressive-style presentation of the endowment (but still using a movie) and completely renovated the Terrestrial Room.

The Los Angeles California Temple was closed for renovations in late November of 2005, with reopening originally scheduled for May 2006, but eventually delayed until July 11, 2006. The renovation also included a seismic overhaul and a complete redesign and reconstruction of the baptistry, which had long been plagued by mold due to poor ventilation.

The well manicured grounds, open to the public, are filled with a various plants, including Canary Island Pine trees, several varieties of palm trees, Bird of Paradise trees, olive trees, and rare Chinese Ginkgo trees. At the left and right of the temple are two fountains, and at the front is a large reflection pool. Several family-themed statues further beautify the grounds. In December temple grounds are all aglow with thousands of multi-colored lights in celebration of Christmas.

While not as regionally prominent as the temples in Oakland, San Diego, and Washington, the Los Angeles California Temple is still one of the most distinctive features of Los Angeles’ Westside. Thousands of commuters pass it every day on busy Santa Monica Boulevard. The proliferation of high-rise buildings along the Wilshire Boulevard corridor and in nearby Century City has reduced its prominence in the Westside skyline. However, its dramatic night lighting and sheer size still make an imposing sight, particularly for travelers exiting the Santa Monica Freeway northbound on Overland.

Rick and Jake outside the Los Angeles Temple

Numerous Church facilities are on its grounds including a meetinghouse, a baseball field, the headquarters of the Church’s California Los Angeles Mission, and apartments (used by missionaries, temple workers, temple patrons, and visiting church officials). The remaining land, along Manning Avenue, was subdivided for residential lots, the sale of which considerably offset the expense of constructing the temple. Because it was the church’s first temple (save the roughly contemporaneous Bern Switzerland Temple) built outside of an LDS-dominated settlement, the Los Angeles Temple was the first LDS temple explicitly designed for automobile accessibility: its parking facilities were larger than those of any temple built previously, and there is no direct pedestrian connection between the front doors and Santa Monica Boulevard.

The temple’s architecture is generally Modernist, an aesthetic that extends to the choice of exterior cladding: 146,000 square feet of Mo-Sai pre-cast concrete facing, a mixture of crushed quartz and white Portland cement quarried in Utah and Nevada. The very light brown pigmentation of the Mo-Sai blend has the advantage of concealing the thin layer of soot that accumulates on most buildings in Los Angeles.

The temple is 369 feet long, 269 feet wide and has an overall height of 257 feet. Atop the temple stands a 15 foot tall statue of the angel Moroni.

The rooms include a baptistry, celestial room, four ordinance rooms, ten sealing rooms, and an assembly room that stretches the entire length of the temple. The Los Angeles temple features murals on the walls of its progressive-style ordinance rooms including the celestial room. The only other temple with celestial room murals is the Idaho Falls Idaho Temple.

Photos by Rickety. Text from Wikipedia.

We visited the Newport Beach California Temple on Day Two of our California Temple Trip. We first went to the Las Vegas Temple, then to the Redlands Temple, then the San Diego Temple, and lastly to Newport Beach in the evening.

Click on the images to enlarge.

The Newport Beach California Temple is the 122nd temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The temple was announced on April 21, 2001 and dedicated by Gordon B. Hinckley on August 28, 2005. It is the sixth operating temple in California.

Jake and Rick outside the Newport Beach Temple

Like its sister temple in Redlands, the temple in Newport Beach uses interior and exterior architectural themes consistent with what was used in the Spanish missions of the early Western US and Mexico.

In response to opposition from residents of the surrounding community, the LDS Church made several modifications to the original design. The exterior was changed from white marble or granite to a more pink granite, considered more appropriate for Orange County. The steeple was lowered from 124 feet to 90 feet, and the exterior lighting is turned off each night at 11 o’clock.

The temple is topped by a cupola holding the traditional statue of the angel Moroni. Here is a little history of the statue of Moroni. In the first version of Moroni, the left arm is hanging at his side, slightly outstretched with his fist clenched. A few renditions later, the figure was slightly modified to incorporate the gold plates. In his version of Moroni for the Hill Cumorah Monument, Torlief Knaphus placed gold plates in Moroni’s left arm. For his version for the Los Angeles Temple, sculptor Millard Malin followed Knaphus’ design and kept the plates in Moroni’s left arm; so did Avard Fairbanks, who sculpted the version for the Washington D.C. Temple. (Replicas of Fairbanks’s plate-holding Moroni stand atop the Seattle Washington, Jordan River Utah, and Mexico City Mexico Temples.) When Karl Quilter designed his version of the figure, he eliminated the plates and then spent a great deal of time making sure the left arm hung in the proper position—not too rigid, not too limp, but showing slight forward movement. (New Era)

As with many contemporary LDS temples, the Newport Beach California Temple is built on the grounds of an existing stake center and shares parking with it.

The temple has a total of 17,800 square feet, two ordinance rooms, and three sealing rooms and is located near the campus of the University of California, Irvine.

Photos by Rickety. Text from Wikipedia.

We visited the San Diego California Temple on Day Two of our California Temple Trip. We first went to the Las Vegas Temple, then to the Redlands Temple. After leaving San Diego we went to the Newport Beach Temple to finish our day.

Click on the images to enlarge.

The San Diego California Temple is the 47th constructed and 45th operating temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

One of the towers is above the celestial room and the interior of the tower can be seen all the way to the top, giving the celestial room a very tall and magnificent vaulted ceiling. The celestial room also has a balcony where one can sit.

Jake by the patron entrance

Located near the La Jolla community of San Diego, it was built with two main spires, but unique to this temple are four smaller spires at the base of each main spire. The East spire is topped with the familiar Angel Moroni statue which adorns most LDS temples.

The exterior finish is marble chips in stucco giving the building a white glow. Just off Interstate 5, the temple is a major landmark when traveling the highway to or from San Diego. The temple is brightly illuminated making it even more noticeable at night.

All Moroni figures are gilded, or covered with gold. The process involves rubbing thin sheets of gold onto the figure’s surface. Today that process usually only takes a couple of days, but once the figure is gilded, it must be handled with gloved hands to avoid marring the delicate surface. (New Era)

The San Diego Temple was announced on April 7, 1984, and dedicated on April 30, 1993 by Gordon B. Hinckley.

Moroni's reflection in a nearby office building

The temple was built on a 7.2-acre plot, has 4 ordinance rooms and 8 sealing rooms, and has a total floor area of 72,000 square feet.

Rick and Jake outside the temple

Photos by Rickety. Text from Wikipedia.