Logandale Chapel A Part Of Community History

When the Logandale LDS Chapel was destroyed by fire last week, the Moapa Valley lost not only a church, but an important historic landmark. The Logandale Chapel was the first church constructed in the Moapa and Virgin Valleys. The building known by many non-locals as the ‘big white church’ served as a well known landmark for people visiting or passing through the community. The old building, along with the community’s schools, served faithfully for many years as a central community meeting place.

Before the Chapel was built, LDS Church members in the community had been meeting in the Logandale School Building. The congregation included members living in the area from the Upper Muddy (Warm Springs/Moapa) all the way down into Overton. As the congregation grew, church leaders recognized a need for a church building in the community.

In those days, the LDS Church required local members to pay for half of the costs of construction for church buildings. This could included cash contribution as well as contributions of materials and labor.

The Ward owned a 1/3 acre parcel on Liston Avenue just west of what is now the VIP restaurant. A small meeting house existed on this property. But the lot soon became a brickyard as the vast brickmaking effort got underway.

Overton resident, Lynn Bowler, recounts how he and his friends were required to walk to the brickyard after school and prepare for Saturday’s work project. “We would spend the afternoon removing the cured bricks from their molds, breaking off the rough edges and then stacking the bricks in the yard,” Bowler remembers.

“We were up there every Saturday morning making bricks,” recalled Bryant Robison of Logandale.

Robison remembers the long process of making bricks two at a time. Cement was poured into the two molds on each pallet. Then the pallets were set on a machine that was “just a vibrating table” to settle the cement into the mold. “Then we had to stack up and spread each one of those pallets to let them cure for about a week,” Robison said. “It was quite a chore and we viewed it about the same way as any teenager would.”

In the Spring of 1949, Grant Bowler became the bishop of the Logandale Ward. In April, Bowler met with the head of the Church Building Department to learn what it would take to get the building project started. They reviewed building plans and selected a set of plans that would fill the needs of the congregation. Bowler was told that $10,000 in cash must be raised in order to begin construction. Additional funds and contributions would be needed as the project continued.

Bowler presented the plans to his ward members and asked for their support. An amount like $10,000 was significant in the small farming community. In 1949, this amount was equivalent to over $90,000 in today’s dollars, and that had to be distributed among only about 30 families in the ward.

Bowler travelled to Salt Lake City to deliver the check to the church officials. But when he presented the check to the Building Department staff it quickly became clear that they were changing the rules. The person he spoke to expressed a concern that the plans discussed were too large for the ward at the time. He tried to steer Bowler towards a smaller set of plans. But Bowler felt that the smaller plans would not be adequate for the congregation. He insisted on the plans that had originally been discussed.

In the end, the plans were approved for construction.

The location for the chapel posed an early problem. Many felt that the planned lot on Liston would be too small for the chapel. What’s more, they felt that it was not an ideal location tucked away as it was from the main road. The Ward looked into the possibility of acquiring another property but determined that it would be too expensive to do so. Reluctantly, they decided to proceed on the existing lot.

Just a week before the groundbreaking was to take place, however, LaVar Winsor’s home on the main highway in Logandale caught fire and was destroyed. The Winsor family was left without a place to live and were in desperate need of housing.

Bowler wanted to help the Winsor family but also saw this as an opportunity for the new building.

A land swap was arranged. The Ward determined to sell its Liston property, use the proceeds to buy a larger lot further down on Liston and trade that lot for the Winsor’s highway front property. All were in agreement and so the final location of the Logandale Chapel was determined.

“It seems a little bit ironic that this building was born of fire and now it has met its end in fire,” reflected the current LDS Logandale Stake President Asahel Robison last week.

The groundbreaking for the building was held on October 22, 1949 and construction began shortly after that. Eddie Miller and Lynn Whitmore, both of Overton were hired to be building supervisors on the project. Neither man was a member of the church. They were the only people paid to work full time on the project.

Members of the church also did regular work on the project and were paid, but they donated a large part of their labor to the building fund. Don Whitney of Logandale was one of these daily workers that donated labor to the church. He came to the site each day and did “concrete work, plastering and whatever else needed doing”, he said.

A large bulk of the labor was contributed by members of the church. The LDS Church would match dollar for dollar all the materials and labor donated on the construction. Labor was cheap, so many people still remember working every Saturday on the construction.

Construction began with pouring the concrete footings for the building. These were cement tunnels that were 6 ft deep and 3 ft. wide with walls a foot thick. The footings ran around the perimeter of the building and contained the utility and heating lines for the building.

There were no large ready-mix trucks to easily complete a cement pour in those days, Bryant Robison remembers. Work crews used a small cement mixer that had to be constantly fed with fine gravel. “I remember dumping a whole lot of shovels of gravel into that machine to mix cement,” Robison said.

With a stream of cement being mixed throughout the day, the cement was poured into the footings one wheelbarrow at a time by ward members. “Those were usually long days,” Robison said.

As the construction got underway, Grant Bowler began to notice that the classroom wing, as shown on the plans, was going to be too short. There would not be enough classrooms to accomodate the ward.

He wrote a letter to the Presiding Bishopric requesting an extension of 24 feet to the wing. As construction was underway, the letter explained that if a response was not heard within 10 days, they would move forward with the extension. No word came back and so Bowler gave the go-ahead to continue with the extension.

Construction continued on schedule for a little over a year. As the building fund was depleted, fundraising efforts would be made locally to raise additional money. Members were asked again and again to reach into their pockets and support the effort.

As the project neared completion, bids were taken on furnishings for the new building. Local church leaders were stunned when the bids came back at about $9,000 for furnishings. The building fund was nearly gone.

Bowler was hesitant about going to the ward members with more requests for cash after all that had been sacrificed. He presented the problem to the ward members and asked for help to find a solution. He was surprised that no one criticized or questioned. Instead the ward members lined up and gave pledges for the furnishings.

The building was dedicated on February 18, 1951, only one year and four months after the groundbreaking. The dedicatory prayer was given by visiting authority and Presiding Bishop LeGrande Richards. On a tour of the building, Richards voiced approval of the building stating that it was not too large as he had been led to believe.

In the dedicatory service, Richards praised the Ward’s faith and sacrifice in building the chapel. “The unselfishness of the people of Logandale Ward stands like a beacon light in a selfish world,” Richards said.

The Logandale chapel was completed. It had cost more than $150,000 to complete. The local Ward members had contributed $30,000 of that amount in cash and another $45,000 in donated labor.

The loss of the historic community structure was a deeply personal loss to many Moapa Valley residents. To them it was more than just a building, it was a permanent fixture in their own personal histories.

Community members gathered at the site during the fire and in the days afterward. They shared common life experiences which involved the old building: baptisms, wedding receptions, reunions, anniversary parties and other important events. It was an emotional parting to a beloved community structure.

Reference material for this article came from Lynn Bowler’s biography of his father, Grant M. Bowler.