caption serviceyears laterwork branch relations death_date death_place birth_place allegiance unit battles birth_date placeofburial nickname rank image article_title name
harry yount in 1873 1861 -- 65 prospector park hunter geological survey guide gamekeeper of yellowstone national union army george c. yount -lrb- uncle -rrb- 16 may 1924 wheatland , wyoming , usa washington county , missouri , usa -lrb- likely -rrb- united states 8th regiment missouri volunteer cavalry '' ` american civil war '' ' 18 march 1839 lakeview cemetery , cheyenne , wyoming rocky mountain harry yount company quartermaster sergeant park_ranger_harry_yount . jpg harry yount
 harry yount
harry yount

henry s. yount -lrb- march 18 , 1839 -- may 16 , 1924 -rrb- 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 .
he was nicknamed `` rocky mountain harry yount '' .
yount served two terms in the union army during the american civil war .
he first enlisted for a six-month term in november 1861 .
he was wounded and taken prisoner by the confederate states army in an opening skirmish of the battle of pea ridge in arkansas in march 1862 and was held as a prisoner of war for nearly a month until released in a prisoner exchange .
he re-enlisted in august 1862 and served until the end of the war .
he was promoted three times and was a company quartermaster sergeant when he was discharged in july 1865 .
he worked as a hunter and a prospector , and as a bullwhacker for the u.s. army , in the years following the civil war .
for seven years in the 1870s he worked as a guide , hunter and wrangler for the expeditions of the hayden geological surveys , which mapped vast areas of the rocky mountains .
in 1880 , yount was hired by the united states secretary of the interior , carl schurz , to be the first gamekeeper in yellowstone national park , and during his 14 months in that job wrote two annual reports for schurz , which were then submitted to congress .
his reports described the challenges of protecting the wildlife in the first u.s. national park and influenced the culture of the national park service , which was founded 35 years later in 1916 .
horace albright , the second director of the national park service , called yount the `` father of the ranger service , as well as the first national park ranger '' .
yount was a prospector during much of the last four decades of his life .
