A gleaming white landmark on Interstate 5 — announced in 1984, dedicated in 1993, and reborn in 2026.
For more than thirty years it has risen beside the freeway — twin white towers catching the California sun, one of the most-photographed buildings in San Diego. Drivers on Interstate 5 know it on sight, even if they have never stepped inside.
This is the story of how it came to be — a decade in the making, built over five years and dedicated amid “lots of tears” in 1993 — and why, in the summer of 2026, its doors are open to everyone again.
At General Conference, the First Presidency announces a temple for San Diego. The need was plain: California’s Latter-day Saint membership had more than doubled in a generation, climbing from about 349,000 in 1970 to some 725,000 by the early 1990s.
President Ezra Taft Benson travels to San Diego to break ground and dedicate the site — his first trip outside the Salt Lake Valley as President of the Church. Construction begins on a seven-acre rise overlooking the freeway.
A gilded statue of the angel Moroni is raised onto the east spire — fittingly, on the 186th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Smith. The figure would become the temple’s most recognizable silhouette against the sky.
The building nears completion — twin towers of white “marble chips in plaster,” a star-shaped glass atrium, and walls of geometric leaded glass.
Before any temple is dedicated, the public is invited inside. The six-week open house draws more than 700,000 visitors — among them California Governor Pete Wilson. The San Diego Press Club later names the temple its “Headliner of the Year.”
Over six days and 23 sessions, President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicates the temple — the 45th operating in the Church. A total of 49,273 people attend. President Thomas S. Monson presides over the final session, which closes at 6:10 p.m. on April 30.
Look closely at the San Diego Temple and one shape begins to follow you everywhere — in the leaded glass, the doors, the floors, the white iron fences, even the flowerbeds. Two squares, laid one over the other and turned forty-five degrees, forming an eight-pointed star. By one count, it repeats more than 10,000 times.
It began with a prayer. The temple’s design architect, William S. Lewis Jr., said he fasted and prayed over the design until he woke one morning with “squares on his mind.” He kept tipping, twisting, and tweaking them until the star appeared. For years, when visitors asked what it meant, the answer was disarmingly humble: “probably just an architectural detail.”
Then someone carried photographs of it to the Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh Nibley — who recognized it at once. The same two-square design rests in a 1,500-year-old mosaic in Ravenna, Italy (about A.D. 520), upon the altar of Melchizedek, the priest-king who blessed Abraham. The “Seal of Melchizedek” had been hiding in plain sight — and President Gordon B. Hinckley later asked that it be woven into other temples.
The eight-pointed star is among the oldest emblems of resurrection and new beginnings — the “eighth day,” the new creation that dawns after the seven days of Genesis. Its octagon bridges the square of the earth and the circle of heaven — the very journey a temple is built to make. It is why baptismal fonts, from the earliest Christian centuries, are so often eight-sided: a geometry of rebirth, of passing from mortal to immortal through Christ.
A note for the curious: the name “Seal of Melchizedek” is itself modern — it first appears in 1992, in Hugh Nibley’s Temple and Cosmos — and careful scholars such as Alonzo Gaskill note that in the Ravenna mosaic the symbol rests on the altar cloth, pointing perhaps less to one man’s priesthood than to Christ’s own sacrifice. But on walls stamped ten thousand times with the geometry of resurrection, the message is the same: life, renewed and made eternal.
This is the season in the history of the Church for temple building.President Gordon B. Hinckley · San Diego dedication, 1993
The temple shuts for a full renovation — its systems, finishes, and grounds renewed for another generation. For the first time since 1993, the public has no way in. The wait will last nearly three years.
Renovation complete, the temple opens to everyone once more. For a few short weeks this summer, anyone may walk through the doors that are usually reserved — the first public access in a generation.
Public open house: June 18 – July 11, 2026 (closed Sundays), 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is free. The temple will be rededicated on Sunday, August 23, 2026.
Free tours can be reserved online at SanDiegoCaliforniaTemple.org or reservations.ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Walk-in guests are also welcome.
Photographs (Wikimedia Commons)
Hero & exterior — “San Diego California Temple” by Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Color panorama — “San Diego Temple” by Armenta Isai, CC BY 3.0.
Black-and-white panorama, art-glass window & spire — by Michael Whiffen (Altus Photo Design), CC BY 2.0.
History & quotations
Period quotations are excerpted from Deseret News coverage of 1992–1993, reproduced for commentary and education. Dates and facts confirmed against the Church Newsroom, ChurchofJesusChristTemples.org, and Wikipedia.