BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History Joseph Yount The Manse Ranch circa 1880. Advertisement

Southern Nye County Founding Father

One of the benefits of studying history is the people you meet. You come upon the rich and the poor, the fools and the brilliant, those who did all they could to tear down society and those who strove to make the world a better place.

In my study of Western American history, I have found few who are as worthy of our respect and admiration as Joseph Yount, and none who deserve it more.

For me, Joseph Yount was a true Man of the West, embodying to an uncommon degree many of the values we most admire about our American civilization, including hard work, a can-do attitude, an openness to new opportunity, and a dedication to family and the building of community.

Joseph Yount, I believe, should be viewed as the founding father of Euroamerican society in southern Nye County and what constitutes present-day Clark County. Though Yount and his family were not the first non-Native Americans to settle in the area, they were the first to make a sustained commitment to develop the area's potential.

Yount was born March 2, 1818, in Howard County, Mo., where he spent his youth. On June 16, 1846, he was mustered into the U.S. Army at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and became a member of the 1st Regiment, Missouri Volunteers. He served under Gen. Alexander W. Doniphan in the Mexican War in operations from El Paso, Texas, to Monterrey, Mexico, with his outfit sometimes defeating much larger forces. He was discharged in New Orleans, La., June 21, 1847.

Following his release from the army, Yount went to California.

He was in San Francisco just months prior to James W. Marshall's discovery of gold at Sutter's Fort in January 1848. While in San Francisco, he is reported to have "suffered many privations, being forced to wrap his feet in gunny sacks to protect them from the cobblestone-paved streets." He is said to have returned to Missouri by way of Cape Horn.

After word of Marshall's discovery of gold got out, Joseph Yount returned to California. Don Hendricks, an associate at the Pahrump Valley Museum, reports that Yount is listed on the U.S. Census records for 1850 in Trinity, Calif., in the Gold Country. He returned to Missouri in 1852, after acquiring a "respectable stake" in gold mining.

In 1853, Joseph Yount married Margaret Parent, 16 years his junior. Over the next 23 years the couple had 10 children, including a set of twins, all of whom lived to be adults. Beginning in 1856, Joseph, Margaret, and the two children they had at that time moved to southeast Nebraska. In 1858, Joseph spent eight months serving as a guide and participated in the Colorado gold rush.

In 1862 Yount was chosen to captain a train of 100 covered wagons bound for the La Grande area in southeast Oregon. By then, there would have been five young Yount children. The Younts are thought to have helped found the town of Sommerville in the La Grande area. The Younts remained in Oregon for 14 years.

A traveler returning to the area in the late 1870s, told of "wonderful stories of the wealth and opportunities" in Tombstone, Ariz., where a big silver strike had been made. A number of people in the valley pulled up stakes and headed for the new boomtown, the Yount family among them.

With two wagons, at least 100 head of cattle, eight children ranging in age from newborn to 18 years; a married daughter and her husband and their small child (Maude, Harsha and Della White); and another family and their wagons and cattle, the Yount family headed for Arizona. Upon reaching Pahranagat Valley, Maude and Harsha White decided to spend the winter there. Joseph and Margaret and the kids pushed on. Further along, the family accompanying the Younts gave up on Arizona and purchased a ranch at Indian Springs.

When Joseph and Margaret got as far as Ash Meadows, they decided to rest their horses and cattle there, turning their draft horses into the mountains east of Johnnie to graze. A week or so later, much to their horror, they found that the Indians had killed all their draft horses.

Knowing it was impossible to go on without the draft horses, Yount sized up the family's predicament -- a 58-year-old man with a wife and eight children stranded in the middle of nowhere. Yount did what he had to do and traded for squatter's rights to the Manse Springs and adjoining ground in Pahrump Valley. The only improvement on the property was a 12-by-15-foot dirt-floored structure made of brush and mud.

When spring came, the family joined forces to produce a crop of corn and watermelon they sold to miners in the area. That gave them enough to survive the following winter. Over the ensuing years, Joseph, Margaret, and their children, joined by Maude and Harsha White and Della, turned the Manse Ranch into a southern Nevada showplace offering lodging for travelers. With hard work and a can-do attitude, they made the desert bloom.

In June 1890, the following appeared in the Belmont Courier: At the Manse Ranch, "sugar beets, blood beets, cabbage, rutabagas, carrots, parsnips, onions, peas, pie-plant, corn, etc., are being successfully cultivated in Nye County ... The wine made in Southern Nye is said, by experts, to be superior to wine made in California, and Nye County raisins contain 2 percent more sugar than California raisins."

The Las Vegas Age wrote in September 1905: "Manse has become a resort for travelers, where water, feed, shade, rest and table luxuries abound ... watered by the springs and ditches, willows, cottonwood, poplars, and other shade trees have grown to maturity. Around the old ranch home are clustered umbrella trees, apples, walnuts, peaches, pears, plums and the smaller fruits and vegetables in abundance."

One observer wrote, "I, personally, did not see the Manse Ranch until October 1905, but I will never forget my first view of it. I had traveled horseback for 50 miles, lain out overnight at Stump Springs, and had come in sight of the ranch at about 10 a.m. When I looked down from a slight elevation and saw the big leafy cottonwood trees, the acres and acres of shining green fields, orchard, and vineyards, the word that came to my mind was Oasis, and surely the Manse Ranch qualified as that ... the Manse Ranch was a sight for sore eyes."

In addition to operating the ranch, Yount and his family had interests in mining and timber. They were an economic and social force -- the first Euroamericans to make a sustained commitment to the area and to developing its potential.

In 1898, at the age of 80 and with failing eyesight, Yount retired from the ranch and moved to San Bernardino, Calif., where Margaret and several of their children had previously moved. Harsha White sold the ranch in 1910, ending the Yount family's 33-year ownership.

Joseph Yount died January 3, 1907, just short of his 89th birthday.

His obituary in the Beatty Bullfrog Miner contained the following passage: "After a life spent on the frontier pushing civilization into the remote corners of the land and aiding in building up many communities in the West, the aged man departed on the soil he had help wrest from Mexico in the early days. The end came peacefully, and with one exception all his children were at his bedside when death came and gently led the old man across the Great Divide."

Note: We are in the final stages of producing a book on the Yount family at the Manse Ranch, featuring more than 100 pictures of life at the Manse, most dating to between 1890 and 1910. The photos are being reprinted courtesy of Joyce Yount Dangermond, Joseph and Margaret's great-granddaughter. The book should be on sale at the Pahrump Valley Museum within two months.