The Box Elder Tabernacle

In 1851, Mormon pioneer William Davis brought a group of settlers to an alluvial fan at the mouth of Box Elder Canyon, some sixty miles north of Salt Lake City. Their settlement was augmented by fifty families in 1854, under the leadership of Lorenzo Snow. In the spring of 1865, President Brigham Young laid the cornerstones for a tabernacle for the people to use for their worship services. Labor on the Tabernacle was only available after harvest and before planting, and work on the Transcontinental Railroad also required labor from the people in Brigham City, for that is what Lorenzo snow named the town. The Tabernacle was finally dedicated in 1890. An improperly installed furnace caused a fire which burned the building to the stone walls in 1896. Within thirteen months, the tabernacle rose from the ashes as a much more fully finished and ornamented building than it had been before. It has served the people of Brigham city and Box Elder County ever since. This book is its story.