S.L. Cemetery will serve as final resting place for 11 LDS prophets

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jan 30, 2008 by Lynn Arave Deseret Morning News

President Gordon B. Hinckley will be the 11th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

He is expected to be buried next to his wife, Marjorie Pay Hinckley, who died on April 6, 2004.

The Salt Lake City Cemetery is located at 200 N. C St. on some 250 acres. It is Utah's oldest and largest cemetery, with approximately 120,000 people buried there.

President Hinckley's resting place, next to his wife's grave, is located just south of 10th Avenue, between the cemetery's Main and Hillside streets.

The grave of President David O. McKay is a little south of the Hinckley family site. Apostle J. Reuben Clark is to the southwest. The resting place of President Harold B. Lee is to the north, across Oquirrh Avenue.

However, the largest concentration of former LDS Church leaders is southwest of the Hinckley site, between Grand and Eighth Avenue. That's where Presidents Joseph Fielding Smith, Joseph F. Smith, Wilford Woodruff and some other former LDS leaders are.

The graves of Presidents Heber J. Grant and John Taylor are situated a little north of that area.

An exception is President Spencer W. Kimball, who is buried at the extreme north end of the cemetery, just above Wasatch Avenue. Another is the grave of President Howard W. Hunter, northeast of President Kimball's.

President George Albert Smith also is buried there.

Presidents Taylor and Grant have stately monuments marking their graves, each one about 25 feet high. Markers for others, such as Presidents Lee and Woodruff, are much smaller. The Hinckleys' monument is also of more modest size.

Those LDS prophets missing from the Salt Lake Cemetery are Joseph Smith, who was laid to rest in Nauvoo, Ill.; Brigham Young, who was buried at his private cemetery in downtown Salt Lake City at 140 E. First Avenue; Lorenzo Snow, who was buried in Brigham City; and Ezra Taft Benson, who was buried in the Whitney Cemetery in southeastern Idaho.

E-mail: lynn@desnews.com