Granite Mountain Records Vault, Utah

One of the largest collections of microfilmed records is inside the Granite Mountain Records Vault, the principal storage facility for the genealogical research programs of the Mormon Church. Since the Mormons are interested in converting the ancestors of every living person, that means having the names for everyone who has ever lived on the planet, or as close to it as they can get. This effort has created the largest genealogical reference system in the world, the hard copy of which is stored on millions of rolls of microfilm (and microfiche) inside this facility- billions of tiny images on acetate. The Granite Mountain Records Vault was constructed in the early 1960s, and contains six archival storage areas, covering a total of 65,000 square feet. The space was created by drilling and blasting into the solid quartz monzonite rock at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, in Little Cottonwood Canyon, minutes from Salt Lake City.