November 10, 2022
Granite Mountain is a mass of solid rock located one mile up Little Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch Range of Utah, near Salt Lake City. Despite its name, Granite Mountain is mainly composed of quartz monzonite, an igneous rock similar to granite in appearance, physical characteristics, and chemical composition. This is the same material used to construct the Salt Lake Temple and the facade of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) Conference Center.
The Church of LDS built the Granite Mountain Records Vault in 1965 to preserve and protect records of importance to the church, including its vast collection of family history microfilms.
The vault is a large archive and is excavated 600 feet into the north side of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Microfilm masters (negatives used for duplication and digitization) occupy 60% of Granite Mountain’s space.
The Granite Mountain site features a dry, environment-controlled facility used for long-term record storage, as well as administrative offices, shipping and receiving docks, a processing facility, and a restoration laboratory for microfilm.
What makes the Granite Mountain Records Vault one of the world’s most secure buildings? Read on to find out.
Facts About the Granite Mountain Records Vault
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The vault is located under 700 feet of solid mountain stone
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Excavation began in 1960
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The vault boasts the world’s largest collection of family history information
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There are three tunnels and four cross-tunnels inside the vault with over 65,000 square feet
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The vault has reinforced entrance doors weighing nine to fourteen tons each that are said to be able to withstand a nuclear blast
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There is also a 33,000-gallon reservoir of natural spring water used for microfilm reproduction and other processes in the vault
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About 675 feet of granite rock guard the tunnels from above
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Steel and concrete line the tunnels, with banks of metal storage cabinets reaching ten feet high
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Arched interiors are painted in pastel colors to alleviate the monotony and eliminate the cavernous atmosphere
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The first microfilm rolls were transferred in April 1963, even though construction was not completed until December 1963
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The vault was constructed for $2 million
Construction of the Granite Mountain Records Vault
The Granite Mountain Records Vault is a massive excavation reaching 600 feet into the north side of the canyon. Constructed between 1958 and 1963 for $2 million, it consists of two main areas. The office and laboratory section sits beneath an overhang of about 300 feet of granite, and houses shipping and receiving docks, microfilm processing and evaluation stations, and administrative offices.
Under 700 feet of stone, the vault is situated farther back in the mountain behind the laboratory section and consists of six chambers (each 190 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 25 feet high), which are accessed by one main entrance and two smaller passageways.
Specially constructed Mosler doors weighing fourteen tons (at the main entrance) and nine tons (guarding the two smaller entrances) are designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. In the six chambers, nature maintains constant humidity and temperature readings optimum for microfilm storage.
Each chamber contains banks of steel cabinets ten feet high. In February 1991, about 1.7 million rolls of microfilm, in 16 mm and 35 mm formats, were housed in two of the six chambers. Alternate media, such as optical disks with greater capacity for storage than microfilm, were being considered for use, making a further expansion of the vault unnecessary.
Today, the LDS Church claims to have the records of over 12 billion deceased people, some going all the way back to the 1st century CE. Data collectors on 220 teams in forty-five countries, along with hundreds of thousands of Mormon volunteers, are digitizing millions of paper records, photos, microfilm, and more. By 2014, the church records were thirty-two times the size of the data recorded by the U.S. Library of Congress.
What Is in the Granite Mountain Records Vault?
Records stored in Granite Mountain Records Vault include genealogical and family history information contained in over 2.4 million rolls of microfilm and one million microfiches. This equals about three billion pages of family history records. About 40,000 new microfilm rolls are added to the vault each year.
The vault also encloses 3.5 billion images on microfilm, microfiche, and digital media. These images are collected through agreements with archives, libraries, and churches from more than one-hundred countries. Copies of these records are given free of charge to the record custodian and on occasion, additional copies are provided to replace records that may have been lost in a natural disaster or fire.
Since 1999, the church has been digitizing the genealogical microfilms stored in the vault. The genealogical information contained in these microfilms is collected from churches, libraries, and governmental agencies and consists primarily of birth, marriage, and death registers, wills and probates, census reports, and other documents that can be used to establish individual identities.
Latter-day Saints use such information to assemble family group charts and pedigrees to bind together ancestral lines of kinship through sealing ordinances performed by proxy in temples. In the religion, such ordinances are considered essential for the salvation of the dead, i.e., those who died without hearing the full message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
However, digitization initially was a tedious process. Scanners of that era had trouble reading underexposed and overexposed images as light densities varied even on the same microfilm roll. As a result, operators had to closely watch for problems, stop, back up, readjust, and repeat. Conversion to digital images was expected then to take more than a century.
Over the years, the church has worked with international scanner manufacturers to develop improved scan rates and procedures. This allows them to produce ten times the images they were able to do five years ago. The church makes the records publicly available through its Family History Centers, as well as online at its FamilySearch website.
In addition to genealogical preservation and storage, the Granite Mountain Records Vault serves as the deep archives for a myriad of church materials, including:
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Scriptures in every language published
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Large leather-bound temple ordinance books that were hand-kept through the 1960s
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Materials and minutes from the meetings of general authorities of the church
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Financial records
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Backup tapes and audio-visual masters from “Legacy” to “Johnny Lingo” (videos produced by LDS Films)
What Makes the Granite Mountain Records Vault One of the World’s Most Secure Buildings?
For security reasons, there is no public access to the Granite Mountain Records Vault, helping to protect the records from tampering, foreign materials such as dirt and dust, and unwanted changes to temperature or humidity. As previously mentioned, this near-impregnable facility is situated under as much as 700 feet of stone. It has an internal water reservoir and doors strong enough to withstand a nuclear blast. There are six separate vault chambers that are accessible by one main and two smaller entrances.
The biggest two advantages provided by the Granite Mountain Records Vault are a protected environment from intruders, fire, earthquake, and disaster, as well as a stable storage environment. Improvements in 2001 led to constants of fifty-five-degree temperature and 35% humidity.
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FAQs
The Church of LDS built the Granite Mountain Records Vault in 1965 to preserve and protect records of importance to the church, including its vast collection of family history microfilms. The vault is a large archive and is excavated 600 feet into the north side of Little Cottonwood Canyon.
Where is the Granite Mountain Vault? ›
The world's largest collection of genealogical records is housed in a secure vault located in the mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah.
Where are the LDS Church archives located? ›
The Church History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, is the primary archive of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Located on the northeast corner of North Temple and Main Street, it is a state-of-the-art facility designed to collect and preserve materials about the Church, its history, and its members.
Where is the Mormon mountain? ›
The Mormon Mountain Wilderness is located in southern Lincoln County with a portion in northeastern Clark County, approximately 60 miles from Las Vegas. Access to the northern portion of the Wilderness is from Glendale, Nevada east 14 miles on federal highway 15 to an unnamed county road northbound.
What is the secret vault? ›
Secret Vaults is designed to protect your confidential data against unauthorized access. A Secret Vault is a data storage on your computer that you can lock or unlock using the password that only you know.
What Mountain do the Mormons own? ›
Granite Mountain (Salt Lake County, Utah)
How much is the Mormon Church worth today? ›
Journalists and whistleblowers have estimated the Mormon church's portfolio at around $100 billion.
Where is the Liahona now? ›
Zina D. H. Young, one of Brigham Young's wives, inherited it upon his death and donated it to the Church. The Church remains in possession of the stone to this day.
What is the Mormon ancestry website? ›
FamilySearch.org is one of the most popular genealogical resources in the world. The site is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is free and available to the public.
How many LDS have left the Church? ›
Some can also become apatheist. A Pew Research report corroborated this, finding in 2015 that 36% of those born Mormon left the religion, with 21% of born Mormons (58% of ex-Mormons) now unaffiliated, 6% evangelical Protestant, and 9% converting to other Protestant, Catholic, or a non-Christian faith.
The mission with the largest geographical area is currently the Micronesia Guam Mission, which covers an area that is roughly the size of the continental United States.
What is the oldest active LDS Temple? ›
The St. George Temple is the oldest temple still actively used by the church. The temple currently has three ordinance rooms and 18 sealing rooms, and a total floor area of 110,000 square feet (10,200 m2).
Where is the biggest Mormon community? ›
The center of Mormon cultural influence is in Utah, and North America has more Mormons than any other continent, although about half of Mormons live outside the United States. As of December 31, 2021, the LDS Church reported a membership of 16,805,400.
What is the Mormon capital of the world? ›
They primarily belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or LDS, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has more than 16 million members worldwide.
What is the Mormon capital in the United States? ›
When Mormon leader Brigham Young founded Salt Lake City in 1847 he uttered the now oft quoted sentence: "This is the place; this is where we want to stay and build our temple." Temple Square is today the center of Mormon religion, boasting its most sacred temple.
What are the vault codes? ›
Geometry Dash vault codes (June 2023)
| Code | Rewards |
|---|
| Ahead | Wave |
| Gandalfpotter | Trail |
| Sparky | A secret coin and other in-game resources |
| Robotop | Robot |
7 more rowsMay 31, 2023
Vault 13, known as the Vault of the Holy 13 among Arroyo tribesmen, is a Vault-Tec Vault located in southern California. Its precise location is west of Shady Sands and Vault 15, and east of Mariposa Military Base. It was the home of the Vault Dweller.
What is the story of Vault 11? ›
Vault 11's Twisted Social Experiment
Vault 11 was designed to test how far its residents were willing to go to ensure the safety of the majority. The inhabitants of the vault were required to hold an election for overseer every year, and by the end of their term, they were to be sacrificed.
What hotel chain do Mormons own? ›
Marriott, whose namesake founding family is active in the Mormon church, has been putting both the Bible and the Book of Mormon in its rooms since opening its first hotel in the late 1950s.
Where is the Mormon Garden of Eden? ›
According to Mormon founder and prophet Joseph Smith, the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri. After the Fall, Adam traveled east of Eden, to what is now Daviess County, to the spot Mormons call Adam-Ondi-Ahman. The church now owns over 3,000 acres here, rolling farm land along the Grand River.
Mormons also believe that Jesus visited the Americas after his resurrection and that there is no eternal hell. * The Mormon church originally allowed polygamy. Smith took at least two dozen wives, say historians.
What was buried with the golden plates? ›
Buried with the plates, Moroni said, were two seer stones, which Joseph later called the Urim and Thummim, or interpreters. The Lord had prepared these stones to help Joseph translate the record.
Are the Three Nephites still on earth? ›
If so, what are they doing? Yes, the Savior granted to John the Beloved and the Three Nephites their desire to tarry on the earth. What they're doing is bringing souls unto the Lord until He comes again (see D&C 7:2; 3 Nephi 28:9).
Where are the plates of Nephi now? ›
Palaeographic study of the plates is not possible; according to Joseph Smith the plates were returned to an angel named Moroni, and are no longer in human possession.
What DNA companies are Mormon owned? ›
In 2001, Mormon billionaire James Sorenson started one of the earliest genetic test kit companies, Relative Genetics, in part due to his religious interests. It was later bought by Ancestry.com, another Mormon company. While today, Ancestry is a publicly traded company, it uses LDS church records and the IGI.
Do Mormons own Ancestrydna? ›
Is Ancestry.com owned by the Mormon Church? Due to the fact that many of the digitized records on Ancestry.com can be accessed at Familysearch, many people assume that the company Ancestry is owned by the LDS church. This is not the case!
Who are Mormons descendants of? ›
Members of the LDS Church believe themselves, in a general sense, to be members of the House of Israel, many of whom believe themselves also to be the literal bloodline descendants of Ephraim, Joseph of Egypt's youngest son, but inheritor, notwithstanding, of Israel's "firstborn" birthright blessings.
Is Ryan Gosling LDS? ›
He and his family were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Gosling has said that the religion influenced every aspect of their lives.
Is LDS growing or Shrinking? ›
In recent years, the global faith of 16.8 million has grown by less than 1% annually and, in fact, is shrinking in a number of regions. In the United States over the past two years, for instance, 21 states saw Latter-day Saint membership decline.
Which church is losing the most members? ›
The Presbyterian Church has had the sharpest decline in church membership: between 2000 and 2015 it lost over 40% of its congregation and 15.4% of its churches. Infant baptisms have also decreased; nationwide, Catholic baptisms are down by nearly 34%, and ELCA baptisms by over 40%.
Jordan River Utah Temple - Wikipedia.
What percentage of Americans are LDS? ›
Mormons make up 1.7% of the American adult population, a proportion that is comparable in size to the U.S. Jewish population.
What is the biggest LDS temple in the world? ›
The Salt Lake Temple is a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. At 253,015 square feet (23,505.9 m2), it is the largest Latter-day Saint temple by floor area.
Who is the oldest LDS prophet to live? ›
| Gordon B. Hinckley |
|---|
| Personal details |
| Born | Gordon Bitner HinckleyJune 23, 1910 Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. |
| Died | January 27, 2008 (aged 97) Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. |
| Resting place | Salt Lake City Cemetery40.774497°N 111.86348°W |
71 more rowsThe membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as of December 31, 2022, was 17,002,461. The LDS church is known for its rapid membership growth.
What LDS temples will be dedicated in 2023? ›
Feather River California Temple
The temple will be dedicated on Sunday, 8 October 2023 in multiple sessions.
What state is mostly Mormon? ›
Utah, American Samoa, Idaho and Wyoming are the U.S. states and territories with the largest percentages of their populations that are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Alberta is the Canadian province with the most Latter-day Saints.
What is the biggest Mormon family? ›
Darger family
| Darger |
|---|
| Current region | Utah |
| Members | Joe, Vicki, Valerie, Alina, and their kids |
| Traditions | Fundamentalist Mormonism, polygamy |
In the terminology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the word "gentile" can be used to refer to people who are not members of the LDS Church, since members regard themselves as regathered Israelites.
What percent of Utah is Mormon? ›
As of 2020, 60.68% of Utahns are reported as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The correct name is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." While most members of the Church do not mind being called "Mormons," a more respectful way to refer to a person who belongs to the faith is "a Latter-day Saint," or "a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
What percentage of Samoans are Mormon? ›
Located in the South Pacific, Western Samoa is a parliamentary democracy. The people are Protestant, 45 percent; LDS, 28 percent; and Roman Catholic, 20 percent.
Do Mormons believe in Jesus? ›
The Book of Mormon establishes clearly that “Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself to all nations” (Book of Mormon title page; 2 Nephi 26:12). At the heart of the doctrine restored through Joseph Smith is the doctrine of the Christ.
Does the LDS Church own the most land in the US? ›
A new database shows the LDS church is the nation's fifth largest private landowner.
How many acres does the Mormon church own in the United States? ›
The Mormon Church reportedly owns over 1 million acres in continental America on which it runs farms, ranches, orchards, and hunting preserves.
How long is Little Cottonwood Canyon? ›
This 7 mile scenic byway from the Salt Lake Valley to Alta and back requires approximately one hour.
Where is Granite Mountain Washington? ›
Granite Mountain is a tall peak in the Cascade Range in King County, Washington 16 miles (26 km) east of North Bend. A fire lookout on the summit can be reached by trail. The fire lookout was first constructed in 1924 and was then rebuilt 31 years later.
Is Ancestry DNA owned by Mormons? ›
In 2001, Mormon billionaire James Sorenson started one of the earliest genetic test kit companies, Relative Genetics, in part due to his religious interests. It was later bought by Ancestry.com, another Mormon company. While today, Ancestry is a publicly traded company, it uses LDS church records and the IGI.
Is Ancestry DNA owned by the LDS Church? ›
Is Ancestry.com owned by the Mormon Church? Due to the fact that many of the digitized records on Ancestry.com can be accessed at Familysearch, many people assume that the company Ancestry is owned by the LDS church. This is not the case!
Why do Mormons care so much about Ancestry? ›
Latter-day Saints believe families can be together after this life. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen relationships with all family members, both those who are alive and those who have died. Visitors use computers in the Church's Family History Library to access information about their ancestors.
Cottonwood Creek Falls are located up the canyon and require some scrambling to reach. The swimming holes, which can be up to 4 feet deep, are a refreshing place to cool off before heading back.
How much does it cost to go to Big Cottonwood Canyon? ›
Is there a cost to enter the park? - Big Cottonwood Canyon. “Is there a cost to enter the park?” no. It is federal forest land and free to enter.
Can you swim in Big Cottonwood Canyon? ›
Try utah. com for more information. Keep in mind that all streams and lakes in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons are protected watershed-- no pets, no swimming or wading. If you are looking to get wet, best to go to Utah County canyons, east toward Uintahs, North in Davis/ Weber County.
How hard is Granite Mountain? ›
Granite Peak is the highest point in Montana and is considered one of the most difficult of the 50 state high points.
How hard is Granite Mountain hike? ›
Generally considered a challenging route. This trail is great for hiking, and it's unlikely you'll encounter many other people while exploring. The best times to visit this trail are October through April. You'll need to leave pups at home — dogs aren't allowed on this trail.
How long is Granite Mountain hike? ›
Enjoy this 7.7-mile out-and-back trail near Snoqualmie Pass, Washington. Generally considered a challenging route, it takes an average of 6 h 8 min to complete. This is a very popular area for hiking, so you'll likely encounter other people while exploring.
