The Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints is building a temple in Modesto.

It is one of 17  new temples that will be built around the world.

Once it is built, it will become the closest temple to more than 4,000 church members in the Manteca, Ripon, Lathrop and Tracy area.

President Russell M. Nelson made the announcement Sunday at the conclusion  of the church’s general conference conducted in Salt Lake City. The Modesto temple will be the 10th in California.

It is a nod to the growing ranks of the church in the Northern San Joaquin Valley that includes a stake center in Manteca that serves various wards in Manteca, Ripon, and Tracy.

An exact location of the temple was not revealed but the fact it is in the region has historical significance to the church.

Modesto is within miles of the site west of Ripon and south of Manteca along the northern banks of the Stanislaus River near the present-day Caswell State Park where the church attempted to establish its first West Coast colony.

Sam Brannan — under the direction of Brigham Young — led a party of 200 men to Yerba Buena now known as San Francisco in 1846.

William Stout was selected by Brannan to lead 20 into California’s interior. Using the launch, they dubbed “Comet” they sailed up the San Joaquin River — the first indigenous people believed to have done so — and landed near what is today Mossdale Crossing in Lathrop.

From there they continued up river and then into the Lower Stanislaus about a half mile above where it empties into the San Joaquin River. After selecting a site and building a central house, the group planted wheat. They had roughly 80 acres plowed and planted by mid-January 1847.

The winter rains that started shorty thereafter ended up being the undoing of the effort to establish a colony.

The rains overflowed the river and flooded the countryside for miles.

It was the second known attempt by non-indigenous people to try and establish a settlement in what is today San Joaquin County.

In 1826 the French-Canadian Hudson Bay Company established a settlement on the south bank of what was to become known as the French Camp Slough just north of where French Camp is today.

They were brought not to this section of California by faith but to capitalize on the abundance of wildlife for the highly profitable fur trade. An agent for a company remained in French Camp through 1845 until trapping had depleted the area population of mink, beavers, bears and other fur-bearing animals.

California has more than 755,000 Latter-day Saints in over 1,200 congregations. Other temples in California are the Feather River, Fresno, Los Angeles, Newport  Beach, Oakland, Redlands, Sacramento, San Diego and Yorba Linda temples.

President Nelson has announced 100 new temples since he became leader of the Church in 2018. With this latest announcement, the Church now has 282 total temples worldwide in operation, under construction or renovation, or announced.

There are  more than 16.8 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worldwide.

“Positive spiritual momentum increases as we worship in the temple and grow in our understanding of the magnificent breadth and depth of blessings we receive there,” Nelson was quoted as saying in a press release. “I plead with you to counter worldly ways by focusing on the eternal blessings of the temple. Your time there brings blessings for eternity.”

The locations of the other 16 temples that will be built are Wellington, New Zealand; Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo; Barcelona, Spain; Birmingham, United Kingdom; Cusco, Peru; Maceió, Brazil; Santos, Brazil; San Luis Potosí, Mexico; Mexico City Benemérito, Mexico; Tampa, Florida; Knoxville, Tennessee; Cleveland, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Austin, Texas; Missoula, Montana;  and Montpelier, Idaho.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com