Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain (October 23, 1838 – disappeared February 1, 1896) was an American attorney who served in the Texas Senate and the New Mexico House of Representatives.

Following a purge of corruption among cattle rustlers that Fountain investigated and prosecuted, he and his eight-year-old son Henry disappeared near White Sands, New Mexico Territory.

Albert Fountain was born on Staten Island, New York, on October 23, 1838, to Solomon Jennings and his wife Catherine de la Fontaine.

Working as a reporter for The Sacramento Union, he travelled to Nicaragua in 1860 to cover the filibustering expedition of William Walker.

Fountain was next appointed an election judge, and finally became the assessor and collector of internal revenue for the Western District of Texas.

He was elected as president pro tempore during the second session of the Twelfth Legislature and served as Lieutenant Governor ex officio at the same time, as the office was vacant.

Fountain's most notable accomplishment was pushing through the bill that re-established the Texas Rangers, which had been abolished after the Civil War.

[1] Fountain's Radical Republican views angered Texas Democrats and he was challenged to several duels, resulting in him killing at least one man, Frank Williams.

Fountain was appointed assistant district attorney and also served as probate judge and a deputy court clerk.

[1] All that was found at the site of the disappearance were Fountain's buckboard wagon, several empty cartridge cases, his cravat and papers, and two pools of blood.

[6] Memorials to both Albert Jennings Fountain and his son are in the Masonic Cemetery in Las Cruces, though their actual burial site remains a mystery.

On February 8, 1896, one week after his and his son Henry's disappearance, Aztec Lodge drafted a charter offering a total reward of $700 (in 1896) for returning the bodies of Fountain and Henry to the lodge, and for the arrest and conviction of the parties concerned in the abduction and supposed murder of Fountain and his son.

A fictionalized version of the events surrounding Fountain's disappearance is depicted in the novel Hard Country by Michael McGarrity.

Fountain's disappearance and death are discussed by John Grady Cole and Mac in the 1998 novel “Cities of the Plain” by Cormac McCarthy, the third and final volume in the “Border Trilogy”.