Workers Split Open This Huge Stone From Salt Lake City – And Spotted A Treasure Trove Hidden Inside

It’s a balmy day in Utah, and a small crowd’s gathered expectantly around a vast granite sphere. For almost 130 years, this stone has crowned the great edifice of Salt Lake Temple, a building at the heart of the Mormon religion. And now, it’s being cracked open. As experts carefully cut through the layers, they reveal a glittering secret hiding within.

The biggest house of worship ever built by the Mormon Church, Salt Lake Temple’s known across the globe. And when its capstone was laid in 1892, tens of thousands of onlookers were there to celebrate the occasion. Many of those present will likely have wondered what the future of the grand structure might have in store…

Well over a century later, Salt Lake Temple was undergoing some vital repairs. And so the huge capstone and the golden statue that it supported were taken down from the top of the building. But when experts looked into the sphere, they realized that it’d been concealing a treasure trove of historic artifacts.

So what secrets were hidden here at the end of the 19th century? And what can they tell us about Salt Lake City – and the people who lived and worked there? For months, experts have been chipping away at the capstone, in the process exposing objects that haven’t seen the light of day in 128 years.

So where did these artifacts come from? And how did they end up hidden inside a stone sphere some 200 feet above Salt Lake City? The story, it seems, is closely linked with that of the temple itself, and with the history of the religious group that settled here back in the 1840s.