First Lehi LDS Meetinghouse

Driving Directions

Address: 200 S 200 W Lehi, UT

• It was the first LDS meeting house in Lehi

• They started construction in 1850 and finished in 1860

• The first bishop in Lehi was Bishop David Evans

• It was the cultural and literal center of Lehi

The Lehi LDS meeting house was finished in 1860, but construction had started in 1850. To pay for the building, they had to assign a tax on the city residents. They had to make many, many bricks, so men worked in pits to mix adobe to make the bricks needed. The building was about 60ft by 40ft and it contained an auditorium, anteroom, and gallery for the choir on the first floor. On the second floor, they had a schoolroom and a prayer room. They tried to keep the building warm with the use of a large pot-bellied stove which only heated the space close around it, so the warm area was reserved for the elderly in the cold winter. The choir gallery included the building seated 500. Founder of Lehi’s famous Broadbent’s Store, Joseph Broadbent was the ward’s choir director. On Christmas Eve in 1871, popular school teacher William Thurmond was shot to death by an angry and drunken student as Thurmond tried to eject him from the building. The Meeting House was both the symbolic and literal center of life in Lehi. Within the walls of this much-loved edifice, not only where there countless church meetings but scores of banquets, dances, theatrical productions, funerals, civic meetings, and political caucuses. In 1903, the Lehi Ward’s 2,500 member congregation was divided into four, and the Meeting House became the home of the Lehi First Ward, which it still is today. The Meeting House underwent major renovations in 1936 and was demolished in 1972.