Site Location Released for Vancouver Wash. LDS Temple (in Camas)

By Scott Taylor, Church News 

The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released the site for the new Vancouver Washington Temple, less than five months after the new house of the Lord was announced.

Projected as a multi-story temple of approximately 43,000 square feet, the Vancouver temple will sit on a 15.11-acre site located at the northwest corner of the intersection of SE 20th Street and SE Bybee Road in Camas, Washington, just east of Vancouver proper.

The new site location was first published Monday, Feb. 26, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

Church President Russell M. Nelson announced a house of the Lord for Vancouver in the October 2023 general conference, one of 20 temple locations identified on Oct. 1.

More information on the new temple — including an exterior rendering and a date for its groundbreaking — will be released on future dates.

Washington is home to more than 281,000 Latter-day Saints in nearly 490 congregations and four operating houses of the Lord — the Seattle Washington Temple (dedicated in 1980), the Spokane Washington Temple (1999), the Columbia River Washington Temple (2001) in Richland in the south-central Tri-Cities area, and the recently dedicated Moses Lake Washington Temple (2023). A temple for Tacoma was announced in October 2022 general conference.

The Church of Jesus Christ in Washington dates back to the mid-19th century, when four missionaries laboring in the area of California were sent into the Washington and Oregon territories. Enough converts joined to create a congregation just north of present-day Vancouver along the Lewis River, a tributary of the Columbia River.

Many Church members helped with the 1880s railroad construction of the Northern Pacific Oregon Short Line in Washington. In 1930, Church membership in the state totaled 1,900 in eight congregations, with chapels in Seattle, Spokane, Olympia and Everett.

Completed in the early 1940s, the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in central Washington produced hydroelectric power and increased irrigation water, resulting in many Latter-day Saints moving into the area and the state.