History of the Kansas City Mormon Temple

Missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometime erroneously called the Mormon Church, taught the gospel to the Shawnee and Delaware Indians in the Kansas area in 1831. In 1846, while the Latter-day Saints were beginning to move west to the Rocky Mountains, members of the Church joined the “Mormon Battalion.” These members volunteered for the United States’ war against Mexico and were trained and equipped in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

For those Church members emigrating from Europe, the Atchison, Kansas, area became a layover site on the journey up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers in 1855. A camp called Mormon Grove was established, and more than 100 acres were cultivated and crops planted for future immigrants. The camp only lasted one summer, but fulfilled its purpose in serving as a way-station for the Saints. In 1882, missionaries arrived in Kansas and organized the Meridian Branch (a small congregation) on the border between Dickinson and Salina counties. Missionaries left Kansas temporarily after mob threats. Missionaries again preached in Kansas in 1887.

By 1930, Church membership in Kansas was 2,060 with congregations established in Blau, Kansas City, Leavenworth, St. John, Topeka, and Wichita. The first stake (diocese) in Kansas was organized in June 1962.  By 2011 there were over 34,000 Latter-day Saints in Kansas.

Missouri has had a rich Latter-day Saint history, for better or for worse.  Joseph Smith, first Mormon prophet, received a revelation that the New Jerusalem, or Zion, would be established with its center in Jackson Country, Missouri.  The Latter-day Saints began to gather there after facing persecution in Kirtland, Ohio.  They had been commanded to build a temple there, but they were remiss in following the commandments of God.  Like the Israelites of old, who were made to wander 40 years in the wilderness, the Saints had to abandon their plans, since God found them unworthy of living the laws of Zion.  They were driven out of Missouri under an “extermination order” issued by Lilburn F. Boggs, and found refuge for a time in Illinois.  The extermination order was not rescinded until 1976.

There are now over 66,000 Latter-day Saints in Missouri.  Church members are now found in every major city in the Midwest. Kansas City’s first stake (group of congregations) was established in 1956.

The Kansas City Missouri Temple will be the second temple built in Missouri, following the St. Louis Missouri Temple (1997).   The building of this new temple was announced in 2008.  The site for the temple was announced as southwest of the intersection of I-435 and Shoal Creek Parkway. The site is situated on land located near the southern tip of Shoal Creek Valley—a beautiful mixed development owned by the Church in northeast Kansas City, just west of the Liberty Jail Historic Site.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the Kansas City Mormon Temple was held on Saturday, May 8, 2010.  On March 24, 2011, crowds gathered to witness the raising of the gold-leafed angel Moroni statue atop the eastern spire of the Kansas City Missouri Temple.   The Kansas City Temple is a fairly small temple and will have 32,000 square feet.

The public was invited to visit the temple during an open house from Saturday, 7 April 2012, until Saturday, 21 April 2012, excluding Sundays. During the open house, there is no charge to tour the temple, but tickets could be obtained from kansascitymormontemple.org. The temple was scheduled to be formally dedicated on Sunday, 6 May 2012, in three sessions. The dedicatory sessions are broadcast to congregations of the Church within the temple district.  Those in the temple district who witness the dedicatory sessions via closed circuit television do so in selected meetinghouses, and through an interview with their bishop or one of his counselors to determine their worthiness, present a conditional recommend to do so.

In conjunction with the dedication of the temple,  a cultural celebration featuring music and dance was scheduled for Saturday, 5 May 2012.

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