“Las Vegas: Also an Oasis of Faith,” Ensign, Dec. 1989, 68–69
Las Vegas: Also an Oasis of Faith
Those familiar with Las Vegas recognize it as a residential city rich in history and strong in civic pride. Latter-day Saints played a key role in settling the area and actively serve today in city government and community organizations. For Latter-day Saints in the area, the community is more than the tourist center and parched desert many people think it to be—it is an oasis of faith.
And now local members are being refreshed by an event they have anticipated since 1984: the December dedication of the Las Vegas Nevada Temple. The dedication is but one more chapter in a Las Vegas Latter-day Saint history that began after Rafael Rivera, a young Mexican scout searching for a faster trade route from Sante Fe to Los Angeles in 1829, stumbled upon a lush valley nestled near a snow-capped mountain. This oasis was named Las Vegas by the Spanish, meaning “the meadows.”
In 1855, President Brigham Young announced the colonization of the heart of the desert between Cedar City and San Bernardino. He selected Las Vegas because of its healthy water, soil, and climate, and sent William Bringhurst to lead a thirty-man party to settle there. As members of the Las Vegas Mission, they were to build a fort, make a treaty with the Paiute Indians, and teach them the gospel.
Settling operations and the mission itself were hindered by dissent over leadership, problems with the Indians, and lack of sufficient food and water. Church leaders finally closed the Las Vegas Mission in 1857. But in 1865, Utahn Octavius D. Gass and a small group of hardy settlers rebuilt the Mormon fort and began the settling process again, this time successfully. The settlement blossomed into a flourishing town with the coming of the railroad in 1905.
Today the city of Las Vegas is a national leader in the number of churches per capita. Of more than fifty-five different denominations in Las Vegas, the LDS Church is ranked third according to membership size. About fifty-five thousand members are currently organized into thirteen stakes in the Las Vegas area.
These members are an active and respected part of the Las Vegas community. Among LDS leaders who are active in their professions and civic affairs are the city managers of both Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, four county commissioners, and United States Senator Harry Reid. James K. Seastrand, the mayor of North Las Vegas, served as the first chairman of the Las Vegas temple committee, and now serves as its vice chairman under the direction of Elder H. Burke Peterson. The temple has proved to be a unifying factor for Las Vegas members and nonmembers alike. “Many nonmembers see it as a spiritual image-builder for the city of Las Vegas,” says Brother Seastrand, “and it’s been well received by the nonmember community.”
The temple dedication has been a big boon to the 170 full-time missionaries who serve in the Nevada Las Vegas Mission. Mission president Gerald L. Scott says that there is a high degree of cooperation among full-time and stake missionaries, members, and investigators in Las Vegas.
Recently, this cooperation was evidenced when the Church video What Is Real was to be aired on a local TV station. Eighty-five thousand printed invitations to view the program were distributed. The other side of the invitation contained additional information encouraging attendance at the public open house of the Las Vegas Temple. According to President Scott, the positive response was overwhelming.
For members, of course, the temple has brought a rush of spiritual exhilaration. The decision to build a temple in Las Vegas was first announced on 7 April 1984. Regarding that decision, Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve said, “The temple coming to Las Vegas may seem unusual unless you really know Las Vegas, for we have counted some of the strongest members of the Church as being here, the firmest in their determination to live all the standards of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The ground-breaking ceremony for the temple took place on 30 November 1985. More than six thousand Church members and guests assembled to watch a videotape of the ceremony later in the day. Presiding over the assembly was President Gordon B. Hinckley, First Counselor in the First Presidency, with Elder Packer and Elder Hartman Rector, Jr., of the First Quorum of the Seventy, attending.
Many local government and religious leaders were also present, among them Richard Bryan, then governor of Nevada. Although not a member of the Church, he commented that “the decision to build a temple in Las Vegas pays great honor to this community. By the construction of this marvelous religious edifice, the word goes out … to friend and to critic alike about the wholesome values that we cherish in this community.”
The desert surrounding the community where the temple now stands has changed little since William Bringhurst and his companions arrived at this oasis. But his sacrifices, and the struggles of those who followed, have surely changed the spirit of the verdant valley. In paying tribute to those early pioneers Elder Packer said, “We harvest where others have planted.”
Whether as full-time missionaries, public servants, or as cooperative neighbors, thousands of Las Vegas Latter-day Saints are helping this part of the Lord’s “desert vineyard” to blossom.
Correspondent: Andrea Morgan Densley is a former Las Vegas resident who now resides in the Montrose First Ward, Montrose Colorado Stake.
The Las Vegas Nevada Temple overlooks the valley colonized by LDS pioneers as a way station en route to California. (Photo by Ralph S. Burton.)