On Easter Sunday, 4 April 1999, President Gordon B. Hinckley, world leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, made the following surprise announcement at the close of the 169th Annual General Conference of the Church:
               "I feel impressed to announce that among all of the temples we are constructing, we plan to
               rebuild the Nauvoo Temple. . . . It will be a while before it happens, but the architects have
               begun their work. This temple will not be busy much of the time; it will be somewhat
               isolated. But during the summer months, we anticipate it will be very busy. And the new
               building will stand as a memorial to those who built the first such structure there on the
               banks of the Mississippi."

     That first structure served as the focal point of worship and effort for Latter-day Saints living in Nauvoo in the 1840s. The
     city they were building on the eastern banks of the Mississippi River was a vibrant cultural and commercial center,
     rivaling Chicago at its apex. But it was even more a religious refuge, a bastion of safety following their forced expulsion
     from the state of Missouri due to differences in religious belief. And the temple, more than anything else, was a
     manifestation of those differences.

     Begun in the spring of 1841, the temple rose on a promontory overlooking the city at the corners of Mulholland and
     Wells streets. Over the next six years, more than $1,000,000 in cash and labor was devoted to its construction by
     Latter-day Saints living in the region.

     In June of 1844 the president and founder of the Church, Joseph Smith, was assassinated in nearby Carthage along with
     his brother Hyrum. Mob action began to drive the Latter-day Saints from surrounding communities into Nauvoo, but the
     work on the temple continued.

     By the fall of 1845, Latter-day Saints were being hounded on all sides, their farms burned, their lives threatened. As the
     new leader of the Church, Brigham Young promised the citizens’ committee of a neighboring community that his people
     would abandon the city in the spring, asking for time "so as to get means enough that we can help the widow, the
     fatherless and destitute to remove with us."

     Through that winter, Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo worked feverishly to complete their temple and receive the ordinances
     available to them in it. But mob action continued. At Brigham Young’s direction, most of the Latter-day Saints began
     flowing out of Nauvoo and across the Mississippi River and into Iowa Territory in February, launching their historic
     cross-country trek to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (where the first parties would arrive in July of 1847).

     Work on the temple continued. On 1 May 1846, the Nauvoo Temple was dedicated in a public ceremony. Church
     leaders asked attendees for a one dollar donation so as to back-pay the laborers. There were perhaps 1000 Latter-day
     Saints left in the town, nearly every one of them preparing to join the 12,000 already making their way west. In order to
     fund their long exodus to the Rocky Mountains, Church officers immediately began seeking a buyer for the temple, even
     at drastically reduced figures.

     On 9 October 1848, an arsonist’s torch gutted the abandoned building, but six months later the Church found a buyer for
     it nonetheless—sale price $2000. Fourteen months after that, in June 1850, a windstorm toppled the north wall of the
     temple, rendering the purchase useful only for the stone block that lay tumbled in heaps. The south and east walls were
     destroyed by inhabitants of the area. The west wall stood until 1864 when it was torn down by residents.

     In February 1937, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints repurchased the temple lot.

     And on 4 April 1999, the story of the Nauvoo Temple began a new chapter.