After roughly five years of anticipation — and some consternation — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has completed its temple in Cody.

Temples are where the church practices its most sacred ordinances. During a Monday tour of the 9,950 square foot facility, church Elder Brett Nattress described a temple as a “centerpiece” of members’ worship and a place where they can go to feel God’s presence and put aside the worries of the world.

The Cody facility is the church’s third temple in Wyoming; up until now, the church’s roughly 7,800 members across the Big Horn Basin have needed to travel to Billings.

“I feel like what’s the greatest gift for me with the Cody temple, is that when we come, we won’t have to make it a day of Costco, Walmart, and all this checklist of things,” said Cathyrn Soloai, a church member from Powell. While the visit to the temple was always the highlight of those Billings trips, “it became a day of checking off errands almost,” Soloai said, along with the added worries of road conditions.

With the new temple in Cody, “I can just come and feel and hear,” she said.

Once a temple is formally dedicated, only church members in good standing may enter. However, anyone is welcome to tour the new building over the coming two weeks as part of a public open house.

A sacred place to serve

The church’s temples differ in multiple ways from its meetinghouses or chapels that are ubiquitous across the state. As one example, members don white garments when they participate in temple ceremonies. Those on Monday’s media tour put on protective booties, but there was no religious significance to those coverings.

“We’re just trying to protect our carpets,” Nattress laughed.

While members of the church are generally baptized at the chapels they attend on Sundays, they can be baptized on behalf of deceased ancestors at a temple baptistry; the church believes those family members can then choose to accept or reject the ordinance in the afterlife.

Starting as early as 5 a.m., temple baptistries around the world are “filled with young people performing baptisms for their ancestors, trying to help someone that has gone before and establish a place where they’re meant to be,” Nattress said.

He called the baptisms a wonderful opportunity for young people to serve and a sanctifying experience.

Temples also include a sealing room where spouses pledge their faithfulness to one another and God and, according to church teachings, are sealed to each other and their children for eternity. Sealings can also be performed for couples who have passed on, who, the church teaches, can choose whether to accept that ordinance in the afterlife.

Like other temples, the Cody site also features an instruction room — where specific church teachings are typically relayed by video on a large television screen — and a quiet celestial room that’s meant to represent heaven and serve as a place of peace and reflection.

Nattress generally described a temple as a place where members learn about God and make promises to serve him, their families and their neighbors.

“If you have a neighbor that’s a little cranky, and they’re a member of the church, just tell them, ‘Will you go to the temple? Because I want you to be nicer,’” Nattress said.

Materials from around the world

The building and grounds are meticulously apportioned, with the church previously indicating that it expected construction to cost around $41 million. 

Located just west of Cody’s Olive Glenn Golf Course, the building is a steel-framed modular structure clad in glass-fiber-reinforced concrete.

The structure and cupola were fabricated by a pair of Utah companies, while a Texas firm handled the installation.

Temple floor plans vary by the region, local church membership and need. Nattress said the layout in Cody is very similar to a temple in Cambodia, while differing significantly from those in, say, Rome or San Diego. 

The materials inside came from across the country and the globe, with some interior tile from Italy, stonework from Honduras and decorative lighting from the Czech Republic.

Installation of the ornate carpeting, stone, glass, doors, paint and millwork was generally handled by Utah-based firms, while Knight Electric of Laurel, Montana, installed the crystal chandeliers, sconces and other lighting.

LandWorks, LLC of Cowley helped shape the grounds, handling the installation of the flowers, trees and shrubs that surround the building on Temple View Lane; the vegetation itself came from a nursery in Kalispell, Montana.

The interior includes numerous paintings, including three originals specific to the area. Two feature scenes from Yellowstone National Park, while Mark McKenna’s “Heart Mountain Glory” highlights the local peak.

‘A wonderful miracle’

McKenna lived in the Cody/Powell area for a dozen years before a recent move to Idaho, and when the plans for the local temple were announced in 2021, he immediately wanted to contribute.

“... I just wanted so bad to be able to even have a little piece or something,” said McKenna, “like, I don’t care if it’s in the bathroom closet or whatever, I just want to have a painting in the temple.”

Five years later, his depiction of Heart Mountain rising above the Shoshone River under radiant beams of sunlight is mounted in the foyer, greeting everyone who enters the building. Seeing his painting on display for the first time on Monday, McKenna became overwhelmed with emotion.

“With how everything worked out, it felt like a wonderful miracle,” he said.

McKenna said he hopes the artwork brings peace and tranquility to those who come to the site.

The painting is among the details tailored to the community.

A church factsheet says the exterior was inspired by the “Romanesque revival architecture” found on Cody’s Sheridan Avenue while the Wyoming state flower, the Indian paintbrush, is colorfully depicted in the windows. On the inside, stylized patterns draw on Sheridan-style leatherwork, all meant to “root the temple in the story of Wyoming’s founding and settlement,” the church says.

“The design is important,” Nattress said during Monday’s tour.

For members, “we hope that it designs their lives in such a way that they love the Lord more, that they want to serve him,” Nattress said. “And the way they can express and show that is by serving his children — our neighbors and friends and our children.”

Traffic, lights and height

Although the temple is designed to be a place of peace, the public planning process leading up to its construction was marked by controversy and heated debate.

Hundreds of supporters and opponents weighed in with comments and petitions as the project made its way through the City of Cody’s Planning and Zoning Board in 2023. A number of neighboring residents felt the project didn’t fit in the residential area, raising concerns about things like lighting and traffic.

During the busiest times — on weekday afternoons — the church previously projected that about 37 vehicles will travel to or from the temple each hour. The city likened the increased traffic to a new subdivision.

As for the lighting, the church decided to shut off the exterior lights at 10 p.m. — an hour earlier than offered during the planning process — before turning them back on at 5 a.m.

The most polarizing feature of the temple has been its cupola or steeple, which rises to a height of 100 feet, 11 inches.

Buildings in that part of Cody can generally be no more than 30 feet high, but then-City Planner and church member Todd Stowell concluded that the unoccupied tower was akin to something like a radio antenna and exempt from the limit. Stowell’s opinion was backed up by the city’s building official and the county fire marshal, but a majority of the planning board disagreed.

Amid months of debate in the summer of 2023, the church offered to lower the spire to 85 feet, but the board rejected the proposal on a split vote. The swing vote, then-member Kim Borer, said she opposed the compromise because she felt “bullied” by church attorneys, who had raised the spectre of litigation.

The case did wind up in the courts, with both The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a group of neighbors called “Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods” challenging the planning board’s decisions.

The Wyoming Supreme Court eventually ruled in 2025 that the planning board had actually approved the temple and its tower during the first meeting on the subject — even though the board members had meant to reserve a decision about the spire’s height.

Stowell’s role in the process also became a flashpoint, as multiple board members felt he failed to properly advise them and questioned his impartiality. Stowell resigned his planner position in the spring of 2024 and later went on a church mission.

Seeing it as a blessing

In recent days, church members made a specific point of inviting area residents to tour the completed temple.

“We hope in a year, and in five years, and in 10 years, that those of our faith and those not of our faith will say, ‘We’re grateful we have a temple there,’” Nattress said.

He said that’s been the case in other areas, “and I sure hope that will be the case here.”

For church members, meanwhile, the construction has been welcomed as a blessing.

Soloai, of Powell, recalled how her parents spent four years helping build the church’s temple in Hamilton, New Zealand.

“Independently, they chose to sell their only car and their plot of land by the beach that they were going to build their home on, so that they could meet the needs of their growing family while on their mission,” Soloai said, adding that their devotion greatly impacted her own life.

Completed in 1958, the Hamilton, New Zealand temple was the church’s first in the southern hemisphere and just the 13th overall. That number has swelled over the past decades, as the facility in Cody is now among 385 temples that are either already operating or under construction.

Tour the temple

Starting today (Thursday) and continuing through Saturday, Sept. 12, members of the public can tour the new Cody Wyoming Temple.

Free, roughly 45-minute tours are available from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturdays, with no tours on Sundays. No reservations are needed.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints suggests wearing business casual clothing and comfortable shoes, but adds that, “you’re more than welcome to come as you are.”

The facility is located at 555 Temple View Drive.