William F. Raynolds

Who was William F. Raynolds?

William Franklin Raynolds was a U.S. Army officer, explorer, engineer, Mexican War and Civil War veteran who is best known for leading the 1859-1860 Raynolds Expedition while serving as a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. Raynolds was also promoted to temporary Brevet Brigadier General in 1865 for meritorious services during the Civil War and retired from the Corps of Engineers a full Colonel on March 17, 1884, after a 40-year military career.

During the 1840s and 1850s, and again after his participation in the American Civil War, William Raynolds was the head engineer on a number of lighthouse construction projects as well as riverway improvements. In 1846, while stationed in Veracruz, Mexico immediately after the Mexican-American War, Raynolds and several other U.S. Army personnel were the first to summit Pico de Orizaba, the tallest mountain in Mexico, and inadvertently set what may have been the American alpine altitude record for the subsequent 50 years. In 1859, Raynolds was placed in charge of the first U.S. Government sponsored expedition to venture into what was to later become Yellowstone National Park. A heavy snowpack from the preceding winter forced the expedition further south than originally planned. Consequently, the expedition become the first federally organized party to cross what is known as Union Pass, enter Jackson Hole and see the Teton Range, now within Grand Teton National Park.