The Anchorage Alaska Temple is the 54th operating temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1997, President Gordon B. Hinckley, Mormon Prophet, announced the building of smaller Mormon temples. There are many areas of the Mormon Church which are remote and where membership is small and not likely to grow much in the future. So it was decided to begin building the smaller temples, the first being in Monticello, Utah, and the second being the Anchorage Alaska Temple. The goal of the Church is to have temples available and accessible to all its members. In the past, members remote from major Church populations have had to travel great distances at great cost in order to reach a temple. Many of these members could only make one temple trip in a lifetime.