Harry W. Child

Harry W. Child (1857–1931) was an entrepreneur who managed development and ranching companies in southern Montana. He was most notable as a founder and longtime president of the Yellowstone Park Company, which provided accommodation and transportation to visitors to Yellowstone National Park from 1892 to 1980. Child was, with park superintendent and National Park Service administrator Horace Albright, singularly responsible for the development of the park as a tourist destination and for the construction of much of the park's visitor infrastructure.

Harry W. Child was born in San Francisco in 1857. After abandoning a course of educational preparation in Massachusetts for Harvard, Child returned to San Francisco via Panama. Back in San Francisco he helped to establish the in 1882. He arrived in Helena, Montana with his proceeds from that venture and established himself in mining, transportation and banking. By 1887 Child was working as manager of the Gloster and Gregory silver mines, owned by J. & W. Seligman & Co.. Somewhat later, Child successfully managed the construction of a smelter in Great Falls. Child became known for a bold approach to business. In 1887 he was involved in a labor dispute at the Gregory mine, negotiating a $250,000 payment to the miners, collecting the cash in Helena, and evading robbery attempts on the way back to the mine. In hindsight, the entire incident may have been set up by Child to obscure his own management error. In 1887 he In 1889 formed the short-lived Helena, Hot Springs and Smelter Railroad. One of his partners in the venture was his brother-in-law Edmund Bach. In 1892 Child and Bach formed the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company along with partners Silas Huntley (another brother-in-law) and Aaron and L.H. Hershfeld.

The Yellowstone Park Transportation Company had an exclusive agreement with the Northern Pacific Railway to transport arriving railroad passengers into the park. The railroad owned a majority interest in the Yellowstone Park Association, which ran the majority of the in-park Yellowstone hotel concessions. After the railroad's minority partners and managers in the YPA left the company, Child, Huntley and Bach bought the YPA in 1898 with financing from the railroad. Child became president of the company. Huntley died and Bach suffered political scandal. Bach and Huntley's stock reverted to the Northern Pacific, but Child bought enough of the stock to own half the business by 1905, and in 1907 bought the remainder from the Northern Pacific, which sought to divest itself of the company after the Northern Securities scandal. Again, the Northern Pacific provided financing of the purchase. In 1909 Child reorganized the company, dissolving the YPA and creating the Yellowstone Park Hotel Company, with himself as president, his son Huntley as treasurer and his son-in-law William Nichols as secretary.

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