In a historic move that takes The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints back to its roots, the church will build its 100th temple in Palmyra, N.Y.
While church spokesman Dale Bills said he is unable to confirm the announcement, a story Monday in the Rochester News Democrat and Chronicle and a Tuesday story in USA Today both report the church will build a temple in Palmyra. Independent sources have also confirmed those reports.To be constructed on the Smith Family Farm on the border of Palmyra and Manchester, N.Y., the 11,000-square-foot temple is slated for completion next year, with groundbreaking set for this spring. President Gordon B. Hinckley reportedly went to Palmyra in January to visit the temple site near the Hill Cumorah on Stafford Road.
An official announcement is expected later this week and would bring to 100 the total number of temples announced, under construction or completed by the church worldwide, fulfilling a statement President Hinckley made in LDS General Conference last April that he would like to see 100 temples around the world by the year 2000.
According to the Rochester paper, plans for the new building were announced locally by Rochester New York Palmyra Stake President David Cook to local church leaders and members Sunday night. Contacted by the Deseret News, Cook referred questions about the project to LDS Church Public Affairs in Salt Lake City.
Latter-day Saints know Palmyra as the birthplace of their faith, where 14-year-old Joseph Smith went into the woods near his home to pray and reported seeing God the Father and his son, Jesus Christ.
Smith subsequently said he received several visits from an angel named Moroni, telling him of an ancient record of the inhabitants of the American continent buried in the nearby Hill Cumorah.
From that record, Smith said he translated what is known today as the "Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ," which details, among other things, a visit by the resurrected Christ to the inhabitants of the ancient Americas.
In recent years, the LDS Church has taken great pains to restore properties it owns in the Palmyra area. President Hinckley last March dedicated a replica of the Joseph Smith Sr. family log home and the Egbert B. Grandin Building, where the Book of Mormon was first published in 1830.
Thousands of visitors flock to the region each summer to view the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which depicts scenes from the Book of Mormon, and is held at the base of the hill where the ancient record was buried.
Word of plans to build the temple in Palmyra circulated widely at church-owned Brigham Young University last week, and a posting to that effect on the Internet further fueled speculation about the project.
The LDS Church was formally organized on April 6, 1830, in Fayette, N.Y., several miles southeast of Palmyra. Later that year, Smith said he received a revelation saying the body of the church should move to Ohio. Until the 1950s, only a small number of Mormons lived and worshiped in the area, according to the Rochester paper.
The Rochester Palmyra Stake includes wards in Fayette and Palmyra and branches in Rochester and Wellsville, N.Y.
Locals say they don't anticipate any difficulty with local governments regarding construction of the temple, which is to be built on property the church already owns.
That hasn't been the case in White Plains, N.Y., where church officials have come up against protests from residents who fear the church's new temple there will cause traffic congestion.