The rain had let up; the sun peeked over the clouds down into the mouth of the canyon.
Three tourists sat on the damp benches listening to Bill Bingham, Kaysville, as he told them stories about the mountains that surrounded them.
The lower temple quarry, where stone was quarried to build the lower walls of the Salt Lake Temple, is on federal land and open to visitors. There is a small trail with markers and an amphitheater. Each Tuesday at 7 p.m. during the summer, one of three guides come to tell groups about the quarry.
Bingham brought tools and pictures to illustrate how the stone was cut and carried from the quarry 20 miles to the Salt Lake Temple.
The stone, referred to as temple granite, is actually quartz monzonite. Huge chunks were broken from the mountainside by drilling several holes with a hammer. After the holes are drilled, workers used a series of wedges to break the stone.
"All of a sudden there's a huge crack that sounds like a rifle going off and the stone splits," Bingham said.
In 1847 Brigham Young, recovering from Rocky Mountain spotted fever, walked into the valley and said, "Here we will build a temple to our God." Wilford Woodruff marked that spot, and that was the beginning of the 40-year saga of the temple.
Wilford Woodruff dedicated the building on April 6, 1893, but before it would be finished, the stone had to be transported 20 miles to the site. In the beginning each stone, after it had been cut, took two days to get to the temple and two days to return the wagon for another trip. When the railroad came, stones could get to Salt Lake City in four hours.
The stone was not cut with explosives or broken apart by the freezing action of water.
"It was all done by hand," Bingham said.
Laurell Welliver from Somers, Conn., said her favorite part was learning about the railroad.
"That was amazing," Welliver said.
Welliver and her sister-in-law Reva Fairbairn of Rexburg, Idaho, attempted to hold the spike and swing the hammer. Fairbairn learned just what a tough job it would be to quarry stone.
"I would not be able to do it," she said, "That's a man's job."
Bingham explained that the workmen in the quarry received a lot of respect. When stone passed on the way to the temple, passers-by would stop and remove their hats.
"They were in awe of what was going on," Bingham said.
Bingham says learning about the past, especially the history of the city, has a binding quality. When times get tough, he said, the past binds a people together the same way a disaster does. Critics are quelled and times get better.
The quarry is located to the right of the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Before the neon sign advertising a ski resort, take a right and then an immediate left.
E-mail: blusk@desnews.com