The Salt Lake Tabernacle dome and the in-progress foundation of the Salt Lake Temple are captured in this albumen stereoview, published by Savage and Ottinger of Salt Lake City under their Rocky Mountain Views series. The card dates to 1870, confirmed by the handwritten notation on the front mount, and the series number "a.196" is printed on the left edge. Charles R. Savage and George M. Ottinger operated their Pioneer Fine Art Gallery on Main Street in Salt Lake City and produced some of the most widely distributed documentary views of early Utah, making their stereoviews primary visual records of the territory's development.

The foreground is filled with cut granite foundation blocks arranged across a broad construction field, with a solitary figure in a dark coat and hat standing among them to convey scale. The completed Tabernacle fills the middle ground with its distinctive shallow elliptical dome and low surrounding walls, while the gabled roofline of a smaller adjacent structure is visible to the left.

Construction of the Salt Lake Temple began in 1853 but progressed slowly through the 1860s due to material and labor demands; by 1870 the granite foundation courses visible here represented nearly two decades of intermittent work, with the Temple not completed until 1893. The reverse bears a manuscript inscription reading "End of Tabernacle and Foundation of Temple."