Let it not be imagined that the work was carried through without hindrance or set-back. The foundation was commenced at the south-east corner June 16, 1853, and was completed July 23, 1855. A course of rubble {140} was laid on the actual foundation and this was succeeded by courses of flagstone. The work had gone forward but slowly, when, in 1857, a serious interruption occurred. At that time the people prepared to abandon their homes, temporarily at least, and seek an abiding place elsewhere in the desert. The cause of the portending exodus was the approach of an armed force sent by the United States government to subdue an alleged rebellion in Utah. This military movement had been ordered through an utter misunderstanding of facts, based on vicious misrepresentation. The coming of the soldiery had been heralded with dire threats of violence; and while the people knew themselves innocent of any act of disloyalty toward the government or its officers, they had not forgotten the harrowing scenes of organized persecution in Missouri and Illinois, due to misapprehension, and they preferred the uncertainties of the desert to the dread alternative of a possible repetition of the past. In the saddening preparations for departure, the people carefully covered the foundation work on the site of the Temple; excavations were re-filled, and every vestige of masonry was obscured. At that time no part of the foundation had been carried above ground-level. When the covering-up process was complete, the site showed nothing more attractive than a remote resemblance to the barren stretch of a roughly plowed field. It is pleasing to note that a peaceable adjustment between the army and the people was effected. The Saints returned to their homes; and the soldiers established a camp,--afterward to become a post,--at a distance of forty miles from the city.[3] {141} The interruption in building operations thus occasioned was followed by a short period of comparative inactivity, after the return of the people. The foundations were uncovered; but, before the resumption of stone-laying, it was found that the rubble overlying the foundation proper and immediately under the flagstone layers seemed to have less stability than was required; and straightway both flagging and rubble were removed. Stone of best quality was substituted, and the work of actual construction was continued with renewed energy. The reconstruction was a work of years. The temple enclosure was for a brief period the communal center of mechanical industry,--the one great work-shop of the intermountain commonwealth. The Church had established there its public works, comprising a power plant in which the energy of City Creek was harnessed to the wheel, air-blast equipment, iron foundry, and machine shops for the working of both wood and metal.[4] Much of the work here done had no connection with the extensive building operations on Temple Block.