The Columbia River Washington Temple is the 107th operating temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
The Columbia River Washington Temple, located in Richland near Badger Mountain, is the third temple in the state of Washington, following the Seattle Washington and Spokane Washington temples.
Church membership in Washington has grown from 67,000 members in 1970 to nearly 230,000 in 2001. With the growth church, leaders felt another temple should be built within the state. This temple serves members in eastern Washington and northern Oregon.
Some parts of the temple foundation includes 2-inch river rock used as fill in concrete forms. During construction of the temple, people were allowed access to open bins of this river rock at the edge of the construction site. Many people wrote names of children, loved ones, etc. on the rocks that were later incorporated into the building itself.
The temple was announced in April 2000 and groundbreaking ceremonies followed that same year. Stephen A. West, a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy, who himself served as a missionary in the area many years before, presided at the groundbreaking ceremony.
Before the temple was dedicated it was opened to the public. Nearly 65,000 people visited the temple during the open house period. LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated the Columbia River Washington Temple on November 18, 2001. Allan D. Alder and his wife, Roma, of Hermiston, Oregon were the first temple president and matron (2001–2004).
The Columbia River Washington Temple has a total of 16880square feet, with two ordinance rooms and two sealing rooms. This temple marked a return to the use of murals to decorate one or more of the ordinance rooms used in the endowment ceremony. Murals reflecting the progressive nature of the endowment had been a standard feature of temples from those first constructed in Utah through the Los Angeles Temple, which was dedicated in 1956. The Columbia River Washington Temple has a first room decorated with murals which leads into a second room without murals. This pattern has been followed in most temples dedicated since.
In 2020, like all the church's other temples, the Columbia River Washington Temple was closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic.[1]