Anchorage Alaska Temple

The Anchorage Alaska Temple is the 54th operating temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On January 23, 2023, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that the Anchorage Alaska Temple will be reconstructed. The square footage of the temple will increase from 11,930 to approximately 30,000. The significantly larger temple will be built on the same property where a meetinghouse is currently in use. The existing Anchorage Alaska Temple will remain open during construction.[1]

The construction is expected to start in early 2024, with completion by the summer of 2026. Prior to the removal of the Brayton meetinghouse, more than 25 organizations from across Alaska came on Saturday, February 17, 2024, to collect the materials they asked to receive.

Sheldon and Christine Fisher, following the example set a few years earlier in California, did not want to see materials from inside the building languish in the landfill. Christine knew they could be put to good use in the community. In Yuba City, California, the Church of Jesus Christ wanted to distribute as many of the items as possible from a soon-to-be-demolished meetinghouse that would be replaced with the Feather River California Temple, a new stake center, and a distribution center. The Church worked with about 15 churches and a handful of nonprofits to re-home some of the items.

“[We have] a lot of friends in the community who do good things within their own congregation," Christine Fisher said, "and by helping them, we knew it would help the faith and the building of the community. We reached out to our Jewish friends, our Muslim friends, and all these other Christian faiths as well as nonprofits to see [what] they needed, and the response was overwhelming. They were just so grateful. And we are so grateful that they’re taking it. I know it just continued to bless the community that this chapel will live on through these other organizations.”[2]

The address of the reconstructed temple will be 13111 Brayton Drive, Anchorage, AK. Once the temple is dedicated, the current temple will be decommissioned, and a new meetinghouse will be built on the existing temple location.

History of the Smaller Anchorage Alaska Temple

The Anchorage Alaska Temple as it currently appears.

In 1997, President Gordon B. Hinckley announced the building of smaller Latter-day Saint temples. There are many areas of the Church that are remote and where membership is small and not likely to grow much in the future. So it was decided to begin building the smaller temples, the first being in Monticello, Utah, and the second being the Anchorage Alaska Temple. The goal of the Church is to have temples available and accessible to all its members. In the past, members remote from major Church populations have had to travel great distances at great cost in order to reach a temple. Many of these members could only make one temple trip in a lifetime. Before the dedication of the Anchorage Alaska Temple, Alaskans traveled at least 1,000 miles to attend the Seattle Washington Temple or the Cardston Alberta Temple.

After the groundbreaking of the Anchorage Temple in 1998 by Elder F. Melvin Hammond of the Seventy, the construction of the 6,800 square foot temple took only nine months. Brother Green, the temple architect, faced the challenge of finding ways to make this temple uniquely Alaskan. He prayed for inspiration, and on one of his trips to Salt Lake City, he noticed something on the Salt Lake Temple that he hadn't seen before—the seven stars of the Big Dipper pointing to the North Star. That symbol is found on the Alaskan flag and is now depicted on the west side of the Anchorage Alaska Temple. Along with that, the temple walls are covered with gray and white quartz-flecked granite, and the temple design incorporates Alaskan motifs, such as likenesses of fir trees on the doorway pilasters. The stained glass is reminiscent of water, and stylized evergreens with patterns resembling native designs are used to adorn interior furnishings. [1]

President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the Anchorage Alaska Temple on January 9, 1999, in seven sessions, with more than six thousand members from as far away as the Yukon braving the freezing weather.

No matter how strong the cold winds of winter blast against our lives – surely the winds of adversity will come – we must keep the gospel flame in our hearts warm and bright. If we do that, then we will be as those whom the Savior spoke of as He concluded the Sermon on the Mount: "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock." [2]

The Anchorage Alaska Temple closed in April 2003 for a 10-month expansion project that added a second ordinance room, offices, new dressing rooms, a waiting room, laundry room, and elevator. After the remodeling that nearly doubled its size, President Hinckley rededicated the temple on February 8, 2004. The Anchorage Alaska Temple now has a total floor area of 11,937 square feet.