Stones for the walls of the Salt Lake Temple of the LDS Church came from this area, where Church authorities beginning construction chose canyon rock as the best material that could be furnished in the mountains of North America. Workers began quarrying huge boulders on the canyon floor in 1861, and the work continued almost nonstop for twenty-five years. Immigrants from Europe taught quarrymen to split rocks into various sizes, after which teamsters hauled the rough-hewn stones to Temple Square for expert stonecutters to give them their final shape. Transporting the stone was difficult: smaller pieces went by ox-drawn wagons, while larger ones, some three feet square and weighing over two tons, had to be loaded by driving a reinforced wagon over the stone, digging trenches until the frame rested on it, lashing the stone underneath, and pulling the wagon out with oxen or mules. Many wagons broke down carrying such weight over twenty miles to the temple, slowing construction. In the late 1860s crews dug a canal to float stones to Salt Lake City on barges, but that method worked poorly and was abandoned when the railroad came to Utah. Beginning in 1871, stones were hauled on flat cars from the railroad station in Sandy directly to Temple Square, and in 1873 the Church and local miners built a narrow gauge railway into the canyon. By the late 1880s the temple walls were up and quarry activity stopped. Stone from here was also used for a few other structures, notably the Utah State Capitol Building and the This is the Place Monument, but the site is best known for supplying the temple.