Granite Mountain (Utah)

Granite Mountain is a mass of solid rock one mile up Little Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch range of Utah, not too far from Salt Lake City, Utah. Despite its name, Granite Mountain is primarily composed of quartz monzonite, an igneous rock similar to granite in appearance, physical characteristics, and chemical composition. This is the same material used to construct the Salt Lake Temple and the facade of the LDS Conference Center.

Vault

The Granite Mountain Record Vault (also known simply as The Vault) is a large vault owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excavated 600 feet into the north side of the mountain. The Granite Mountain facilities feature a dry, environment-controlled facility used for long-term record storage, as well as administrative offices, shipping and receiving docks, a processing facility and restoration laboratory for microfilm.

Records stored include genealogical information contained in over 2.4 million rolls of microfilm and 1 million microfiche. This equals about 3 billion pages of family history records. The vault's library of microfilm increases by up to 40,000 rolls per year. Since 1999, the church has been digitizing the genealogical microfilms stored in the vault. The church makes the records publicly available through its Family History Centers, as well as online at its FamilySearch website.

References

*http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/daily/family_history/granite_mountain_eom.htm
*http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=11011

External links

* [http://www.familysearch.org/ FamilySearch.org]
* [http://www.lds.org/ LDS Church Official Web Site]