Groundbreaking Announced for the Fairbanks Alaska Temple

The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced the groundbreaking date for the Fairbanks Alaska Temple.

Groundbreaking services for the Fairbanks Alaska Temple will be held on Saturday, September 27, 2025. Elder Peter M. Johnson, First Counselor in the North America West Area Presidency, will preside at the event.

As previously announced, this temple will be built on a 7.59-acre site located along Geist Road in Fairbanks. Plans call for a single-story temple of approximately 10,000 square feet, a meetinghouse and an accompanying ancillary building. This will be the city’s first temple.

Church President Russell M. Nelson announced this temple during the October 2023 general conference.

“The ordinances and covenants of the temple are of eternal significance. We continue to build more temples to make these sacred possibilities become a reality in each of your lives,” he said then.

The temple in Fairbanks will be the second house of the Lord in the state of Alaska, joining the temple in Anchorage, which was rededicated by then-Church President Gordon B. Hinckley in February 2004.

The first members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in Alaska with the gold rush in 1898. One of them, Dr. Edward G. Cannon, helped to establish the Church there by maintaining a portable “tabernacle” that was transported from settlement to settlement.

The first congregation in Alaska was organized in July 1938. Today, nearly 34,000 Latter-day Saints in more than 80 congregations call the state of Alaska home.

Latter-day Saints worship in temples for several reasons: to feel God’s love and peace, to learn more about God’s plan for His children and the gospel of Jesus Christ, to make promises with God and with one’s husband or wife, and to unite families in this life and the next through sacred ordinances.