Langford, Nathaniel Pitt (1832-1911)

US explorer and conservationist. He explored the Yellowstone area in 1870 and, after playing an influential role in having it designated a national park in 1872, he served, without pay, as the first superintendent of Yellowstone Park (1872-76). Langford was born in Westmoreland, New York. He moved to Minnesota in 1854 and then to Bannack, Montana, in 1862, where he led a group of Mormon vigilantes, described in Vigilante Days and Ways (1890).