Harry Yount

Harry Yount
Harry Yount in 1873
Nickname	"Father of the ranger service" "First national park ranger" "Rocky Mountain Harry Yount"
Born	March 18, 1839(1839-03-18) Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania or Washington County, Missouri, USA
Died	May 16, 1924(1924-05-16) (aged 85) Wheatland, Wyoming, USA
Buried at	Lakeview Cemetery, Cheyenne, Wyoming
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	Union Army
Years of service	1861–1865
Rank	Company Quartermaster Sergeant
Unit	8th Regiment Missouri Volunteer Cavalry
Battles/wars	American Civil War Battle of Pea Ridge
Relations	George C. Yount (uncle)
Other work	Geological survey guide Gamekeeper of Yellowstone National Park

Henry S. Yount (March 18, 1839 – May 16, 1924) was an American Civil War soldier, mountain man, professional hunter and trapper, prospector, wilderness guide and packer, seasonal employee of the United States Department of the Interior, and the first gamekeeper in Yellowstone National Park. Horace Albright, second director of the National Park Service, called him the "father of the ranger service, as well as the first national park ranger". He was nicknamed "Rocky Mountain Harry Yount".

Family background

Harry Yount's ancestors, Hans George Jundt and Anna Marie Jundt, arrived in Philadelphia in 1731, immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine. One of their sons, Andrew Yount, followed in 1751, and later moved to Randolph County, North Carolina. Andrew was a Quaker, as were his children, including John Yount, Harry's paternal grandfather. Harry's parents were David Yount (1795–1881) and Catherine Shell Yount. With a number of other Quaker family members, they emigrated from North Carolina to Missouri in the 1830s.

Harry's uncle, George C. Yount, was a trapper and explorer who moved on from Missouri to Santa Fe and then to California. In the 1830s, he became the first citizen of the United States to settle in California's Napa Valley, then Mexican territory. The town of Yountville, California is named after him. Two of Harry's older brothers, Caleb and John Yount, also moved to the Napa Valley years later.

Biography

Date and place of birth

There are a number of conflicting accounts of Harry Yount's place and date of birth. Ernest Ingersoll wrote that he was born in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, and birth years of 1847 and 1837 have been mentioned by various writers. However, research done by National Park Service employee William R. Supernaugh found 1840 United States Census records, Yount's military enlistment papers and his Army pension file, all of which show that he was born on March 18, 1839. All these records also show that his legal name was Henry S. Yount.

Although his place of birth is not documented definitively, it is highly likely that he was born in Harmony Township, Washington County, Missouri, because the 1840 census shows his father living there with a baby son. He was the tenth child born to his father, who was about 44 years old at the time of his birth. Henry was listed as 11 years old in the 1850 census. Harmony Township is a rural area about 75 miles southwest of St. Louis.

Civil War military service

The Battle of Pea Ridge, where Yount was taken prisoner in 1862

Yount enlisted in the Union Army for a six-month term on November 9, 1861. He served in Company F of Phelps' Regiment of the Missouri Infantry. He was wounded in the leg in a skirmish just before the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas, and was taken prisoner by the Confederates. As a captive, he was marched over 90 miles to Fort Smith in his bare feet on cold, wet roads, and was held there as a POW for 28 days, when he was released in a prisoner exchange. He was discharged in May 1862.

Yount re-enlisted in the Union Army in Lebanon, Missouri on August 9, 1862, and served as a private in Company H of the 8th Regiment Missouri Volunteer Cavalry, a unit involved in 11 engagements during his service. On April 14, 1863, he was promoted to corporal. On December 9, 1863, he was promoted to sergeant, and promoted to Company Quartermaster Sergeant on June 13, 1864. He was discharged in Little Rock, Arkansas on July 20, 1865, when the war had ended.

After the war, Yount became engaged to Estella Braun, a Western Union employee in Detroit, Michigan. Before their marriage could take place, she was killed in a train wreck. He never married.

As a result of his wound and the barefoot march to captivity, Yount developed rheumatism in both legs. When the Dependent and Disability Pension Act passed in 1890, he became eligible for a monthly partial disability pension of $6.00 in 1892, which was raised to $12.00 a month in 1900 and $25.00 in 1912. He was an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the post-war organization of veterans of the Union Army.

Hunter and trapper

Harry Yount circa 1873

After the Civil War, Yount traveled to Fort Kearny, located along the Oregon Trail in Nebraska. There, he was hired as an Army bullwhacker, transporting supplies along the Bozeman Trail between Fort Laramie in modern-day Wyoming and Fort C. F. Smith in modern-day Montana. Conflict with Native Americans was ongoing in this region in those years, and Yount fought against Cheyenne and Sioux warriors several times while on the trail. In one incident, his ox wagon was harassed for four days by a party of Sioux warriors, until he was forced to fire his carbine at one warrior, hitting and probably killing the warrior's horse. Supernaugh comments that Yount believed that Indians would kill him if they could. However, he didn't "blame the Indians for defending what was their country originally."

Yount also worked as a buffalo hunter during this period. He sold buffalo tongues for $1.00 each to tourists in Cheyenne. Yount believed that "it was a pity to kill off the buffaloes, which were here in immense numbers, but it was the only way to get rid of the Indians, as the buffalo were their main source of subsistence."

The Smithsonian Institution engaged Yount's services to collect specimens of animals for taxidermy display in the early 1870s. Because he was successful in this first assignment, Spencer F. Baird of the Smithsonian retained his services in 1875 to collect specimens of many species of Rocky Mountain mammals. It is likely that many of these specimens were displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, as photos of the exhibit halls show this type of item. During those years, Yount also gained some success as a prospector.

In 1877, three years before he was hired in Yellowstone, Yount was the subject of a magazine profile written by Ernest Ingersoll and published in Appletons' Journal in New York. Ingersoll described Yount's expertise as a hunter, including a story that he once killed 70 antelope in one day in a competition with another hunter, but that he was ashamed of the accomplishment because "it went against his heart to kill so many innocent creatures just for the glory." Yount would fill a wagon full of freshly killed game, and then sell the meat in towns like Laramie and Cheyenne.

Ingersoll described Yount as quite careful about his personal appearance, commenting that "his belt, holster, knife-sheath, bridle, and saddle are all set off with a barbaric glitter." Yount paid a Shoshone woman to decorate his buckskin jacket, "a marvel of fringes, fur trimming and intricate embroidery of beads."

Ingersoll wrote that Yount was "by nature a gentleman, and under his sinewy frame and tireless strength, there is a heart as tender as a girl's, which hates the cruelty his profession unavoidably occasions. His eye is open to every beautiful feature of the grand world in which he lives; his heart is alive to all the gentle influences of the original wilderness."

Ingersoll also described Harry Yount in his 1883 book, Knocking 'Round the Rockies, in an update based on his 1877 magazine article.

Guide for the Hayden Geological Survey

Harry Yount atop Berthoud Pass in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado

In 1872 or 1873, Yount was hired as a seasonal guide, wrangler and packer for the geological survey expeditions led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, funded by the Department of the Interior to map vast regions of the Rocky Mountains. Hayden had been one of the leading advocates for the creation of Yellowstone National Park. President Ulysses S. Grant signed legislation establishing the park on March 1, 1872.

Yount worked each summer for Hayden's expeditions for seven years in the 1870s, in what are now the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado. The expedition did surveying in Yellowstone in 1878. Each winter in those years, he would hunt and trap in the Laramie Range in Wyoming.

Hayden's expedition of 1878 included British mountaineer James Eccles and Eccles's favorite Swiss mountain guide, Michel Payot of Chamonix. Eccles wanted to attempt an ascent of the Grand Teton. Yount served as the guide of a four-man party that included Eccles, Payot and cartographer A.D. Wilson. Eccles and Payot were unfortunately held up by the disappearance of two mules carrying their gear, and so were unable to accompany Wilson and Yount on the higher parts of the mountain. Because of the delay and the absence of the experienced Alpine climbers, Yount and Wilson had to turn back a few hundred feet short of the summit, at a spur called "The Enclosure". During the climb, Yount fell and "slipped on the treacherous ice of the surface, falling down and sliding close to a deep chasm in the glacier, where a large stream of water came down from the cliff above. The hold that his buckskin pants kept on the ice was the only thing that prevented him from being carried down into the unfathomable depths of the great crevice."

The undisputed first ascent of the Grand Teton took place 20 years later, in 1898.

The Hayden Survey was one of several regional survey projects that were combined to form the United States Geological Survey in 1879.

Gamekeeper in Yellowstone National Park

Yount was hired as the first game keeper for Yellowstone National Park in 1880, at a salary of $1,000.00 per year, when the park's entire budget was just $15,000.00 per year. He was appointed by Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Interior and a former Union Army general, on June 21, 1880, and reported for duty at Yellowstone on July 6. His supervisor was Philetus Norris, the 2nd park superintendent. Shortly after arriving, Yount escorted Carl Schurz and his party on a tour of the park, and then conducted a survey of the park's wildlife. Yount began constructing a winter camp at the junction of the East Fork of the Yellowstone River (now known as the Lamar River), and Soda Butte Valley. He selected this location because it allowed him to protect herds of buffalo and elk against poachers.

Yount submitted his first "Report of Gamekeeper" on November 25, 1880, which was included as Appendix A to the annual report of the Secretary of the Interior. His report described his activities since being hired, and concluded that protection of the park "cannot be done by any one man". He recommended:

The appointment of a small, active, reliable police force, to receive regular pay during the spring and summer at least, when animals are likely to be slaughtered by tourists and mountaineers. It is evident that such a force could, in addition to the protection of game, assist the superintendent of the Park in enforcing the laws, rules and regulations for protection of guide-boards and bridges, and the preservation of the countless and widely scattered geyser-cones and other matchless wonders of the Park.

In his September 30, 1881 report, Yount described how he spent the bitter winter of 1880-1881, and his efforts to prevent poaching by tourists and Indians, while engaging in what he saw as limited and reasonable hunting to provide food for the park staff. He described the range and habits of the large mammals of Yellowstone. He expressed regret for "the unfortunate breakage of my thermometer when it could not be replaced" but submitted a synopsis of the weather the previous winter. In this report, he resigned his position "to resume private enterprises now requiring my personal attention", and concluded with a clear recommendation:

I do not think that any one man appointed by the honorable Secretary, and specifically designated as a gamekeeper, is what is needed or can prove effective for certain necessary purposes, but a small and reliable police force of men, employed when needed, during good behavior, and dischargeable for cause by the superintendent of the park, is what is really the most practicable way of seeing that the game is protected from wanton slaughter, the forests from careless use of fire, and the enforcement of all the other laws, rules, and regulations for the protection and improvement of the park.

There are indications that Yount had a difference of opinion with park superintendent Norris, who wanted him to spend more of his time building roads for the convenience of tourists. Yount preferred to concentrate on protecting game.

First National Park Ranger

Although Yount's official job title was "gamekeeper" rather than "park ranger", and although he only worked in Yellowstone National Park for 14 months, his two annual reports had an ongoing impact on the administration of the national parks in the United States. He is "securely positioned in the legend and culture" of the National Park Service, and is considered a figure of "historic proportion".

In Oh, Ranger!, a book published in 1928, Horace Albright, who later became the second director of the National Park Service, wrote that:

"Harry Yount pointed out in a report that it was impossible for one man to patrol the park. He urged the formation of a ranger force. So Harry Yount is credited with being the father of the ranger service, as well as the first national park ranger."

Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, wrote the forward to this book, thereby adding his endorsement to Harry Yount's role in national park history.

Homesteader and prospector

After he resigned from his job in Yellowstone, Yount lived for a while in a community called Uva in Laramie County, Wyoming. He homesteaded in the area in 1887 but his claim was sold in a sheriff's sale in 1892. He spent nearly 40 years prospecting in the Laramie Mountains, and developed copper and graphite claims. He settled in Wheatland, Wyoming, and worked on developing a marble claim west of there. Long after his death, in the 1970s, this claim finally went into production. It yielded crushed marble for landscaping and aquarium purposes.

Death

Yount was actively involved in prospecting until the day before his death, when he had been looking for a ride to inspect a possible gold deposit. On May 16, 1924 he walked into downtown Wheatland, as was his daily habit, where he collapsed and died of heart failure near a Lutheran church.

He was buried in the Lakeview Cemetery in Cheyenne, where his headstone reads, "Q.M. SGT HARRY S. YOUNT CO.H 8 MO. CAV."

Legacy

Scott Emmerich receives the 2010 Harry Yount Award from Will Shafroth

Younts Peak, (12,156 feet) located in the Absaroka Range at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, is named after Yount. The peak's name was bestowed by the Hayden Geological Survey.

Yount is "credited with setting the standards for performance and service by which the public has come to judge the rangers of today".

In 1994, the National Park Service established the Harry Yount Award, given annually to an employee whose "overall impact, record of accomplishments, and excellence in traditional ranger duties have created an appreciation for the park ranger profession." This award is given both nationally and regionally.

See also

• Hayden Geological Survey of 1871

External links

• Harry Yount (1837–1924) at the National Park Service
• Harry S. Yount at Find a Grave