AFTON, WYOMING — Former Vice President Dick Cheney visited The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' new Star Valley Wyoming Temple here Thursday, part of a special entourage of visitors given a tour of the new edifice prior to the start of the public open house.

Joining the former vice president was Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, who was accompanied by other elected officials flying into Afton’s small airport for the special guest tour conducted by Elder Larry Y. Wilson, general authority Seventy and executive director of the church’s Temple Department.

Cheney, who served under Republican President George W. Bush from 2001-2009 and also served as a U.S. Congressman from Wyoming, called the temple — the church's 154th operating temple but the first in the state — “enormously important.”

He called it a “historic day, even for those of us who are not members of the LDS Church. It’s a magnificent testimony to the faith of the people of this part of Wyoming.”

After the tour, he told the Deseret News "my wife [Lynne] is descended from Mormon stock, and we have a history that she had two great-great-grandmothers who went west in that early period in the early 1850s.

“So we have had an interest [in the history], but this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to visit a temple, and it’s a magnificent building. It really is.”

After emerging from the temple, Elder Wilson led the entourage, which also included religious, academic and community leaders, to a visitor’s tent, where they mingled near a smaller replica of the Christus statue. For several moments, he and the former vice president stood visiting on this warm fall afternoon.

“We had a marvelous experience with governmental, community leaders and religious leaders in the temple today,” Elder Wilson said. “They were very moved by the beauty of the temple. I think they felt the great spirit of it, and they could see why we believe this is one of the greatest things to ever happen in the history of Star Valley.”

Pausing for a few moments on the grounds of the temple, which will serve LDS Church members in western Wyoming and parts of southeast Idaho, Mead agreed that the new edifice is “absolutely beautiful, beyond I think many expectations. Flying in this morning, seeing this beautiful facility here is tremendous, but even beyond that, what it means to the state of Wyoming to have a first LDS temple.

“This is significant not only for those of the LDS faith but also for the entire state because we recognize what it means to support families, to have strong families. That is a benefit to all of us in Wyoming, whether of the LDS faith or not.”

At a luncheon afterward at an LDS meetinghouse on Highway 89 just south of the temple, Elder Wilson thanked the former vice president and the Wyoming government officials for their service to their state and communities. Then, President Mark Taylor, president of the Afton Wyoming Stake and chairman of the temple open house and dedication committee, presented the governor with a framed display of his five family generations.

In turn, Mead delighted the crowded room by announcing a gift to the LDS Church of a Mormon handcart found in a barn at his ranch near Cheyenne.

The governor said after the luncheon that he doesn’t know how long the handcart had been on his ranch, known as the Boswell Ranch, named for a county sheriff from Wyoming’s history.

“But Carol [his wife] and I believe in our hearts that the church should have it. We both just thought it is something that belongs with this church and is part of the history and the culture.”

The handcart, which Mead said is in need of restoring, will be presented at a later time.

Also at the luncheon, among local church and community leaders, were former Utah state Sen. Michael G. Waddoups and his wife, Anna Kay Nield Waddoups, who was reared in Afton; and President Clark G. Gilbert of BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, Idaho, and his wife, Christine.

The public open house of the Star Valley Wyoming Temple begins Friday, Sept. 23, and runs through Oct. 8, with exceptions. For free tickets, go to tickets.lds.org.

Julie Dockstader Heaps is a freelance journalist living in Syracuse, Utah, where she enjoys writing, running, gardening, being involved in her community and, most important, spending time with her husband, David, and their daughter, Hannah Mae.