The Portland Oregon Temple is a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints located on 7 acres or 28,000 square miles near the intersection of Highway 217 and I-5 in Lake Oswego, Oregon. This temple was the church's 42nd operating temple and was dedicated in August 1989. It serves members of stakes in the Portland metropolitan area, which includes Portland, Beaverton, Cedar Mill, Gresham, Hillsboro Lake, Milwaukee, Oregon City, and Tualatin. It also serves stakes located in other parts of Oregon: Bend, Corvallis, Eugene, Keizer, Lebanon, McMinnville, Monmouth, Mount Hood, Rainer, Redmond, Salem, Springfield, and The Dalles. Its service is also extended in two cities in Washington, the Longview and Vancouver. The Portland Temple, being the first one that was built in Oregon, features six white spires and a marble built exterior. It elegantly rises above the towering pine trees. On the east side of the Portland LDS Temple is a reflection pool calmly sitting at the base of the main spire. The grounds were left heavily wooded, and the spires are decorated to suggest the large trees surrounding the Temple. It has a total surface area of 80,500 square feet or 7,480 square meters, having four ordinance rooms and fourteen sealing rooms. The temple doesn’t have any visitors’ center. The Portland Oregon Temple is situated on a land that was originally purchased in the 1960s for the purpose of building a junior college. However, when it came to the time when a Temple in the state is to be built, the committee members of the temple decided that the property was the best place for the establishment of the temple. The process of acquiring the approval for the construction of the Temple on the land was difficult. The appeal had to undergo at least twenty-seven public hearings, eight lawsuits, and four petition drives which were intended to stop the development. Eventually, the Temple construction was able to commence. Later when that decision was reversed, 7.3 acres were retained for the temple.
The Portland Temple has six spires, but is dramatically different from the Boise style temples. It is much larger, the spires are attached to the building and there is an annex similar to the one on the Washington Temple. The Boise temple, which is located in Idaho, serves stakes in southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon. The two-story Celestial Room of the Portland Oregon Temple features three chandeliers, long wall tapestries, and a grand staircase. A collection of sealing rooms with white marble altars and a large assembly hall line up on the top floor of the Portland Oregon temple. The floor plan created for the temple was adopted and used for the Las Vegas Nevada Temple. On May 11, 1988, the gold-leafed statue of the angel Moroni, an important figure in the theology of the Latter Day Saint movement and is featured prominently in Mormon architectures and arts, was set into place atop the 170-foot eastern spire to an audience of television cameras, newspaper photographers, and beaming Church members. The Portland Oregon Temple was announced on April 7, 1984 and its groundbreaking was held on September 20, 1986 which was lead by Gordon B. Hinckley. When the temple was finally completed, the attitudes of those in the community seemed to have changed that almost 300,000 people attended the open house. On August 19, 1989 the Portland Oregon Temple was dedicated by President Gordon B. Hinckley, the First Counselor in the First Presidency. A striking number of 314,232 visitors took tours around the Portland Oregon Temple during its public open house. It was the fifth highest number of temple open house visitors in the whole church history at that time. President Ezra Taft Benson presided over and offered remarks at the first three dedicatory sessions of the Portland Oregon Temple, though he extended the responsibility of offering the dedicatory prayer to his first counselor, Gordon B. Hinckley. Ezra Taft Benson was the thirteenth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1985 until his death and was United States Secretary of Agriculture for both of the administrations of President Dwight. In 1994, the Portland Oregon Temple was awarded first place by the Royal Rosarians of Portland, Oregon, in the category of commercial rose plantings. From then on, Portland is known as the "City of Roses."
