It is coincidental that the exterior wood trim of pioneer leader Brigham Young's winter home is painted in pleasing shades of green and red — colors we associate with Christmas, a time of year when the great Mormon colonizer took up residence in St. George in his later years.
The story goes, Elder Lloyd Collings says, that in the early 1870s the builders of the St. George LDS Temple ordered white paint to coat the Mormon community's planned centerpiece. With sandstone walls that were to be plastered and then whitewashed, the temple was to become the first completed and dedicated by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in their sprawling, proposed "State of Deseret," more generally known by this time as Utah Territory.