Granite Mountain Vault to open 3.5 billion genealogical records to public

Shauna Khorrami, Reporter and Jared Preusz, Web Content Producer FOX 13 News
2:58 PM MDT, April 28, 2010

SALT LAKE CITY - A major breakthrough in family history research was announced Wednesday by the National Genealogical Society in Salt Lake City. The announcement made at the 32nd annual Family History Conference at the Salt Palace was that the Granite Mountain Vault, which houses over 3.5 billion genealogical records, will be made available to the public for the first time. The vault, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, houses information such birth, marriage and death certificates, wills, census and land records, and probate listings.

"What we've done over 80 years is we've gone to the different archives in the world, including churches and state archives," said Jay Verkler, CEO of Family Research. "We've collected copies of records."

Records in the vault date back hundreds of years and will all be digitized and made available online. The first round will go up this week and includes 300 million images. The rest of the information will follow over the next few years.

The LDS Church will also give the public an inside look at the vault with a tour.

The conference also gave people a look at some of the newest and most advanced methods of tracing a family tree. The conference continues until Saturday at the Salt Palace in downtown Salt Lake City.

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