Stories and Shared Memories...
Newton County, Arkansas
 Hilary Jones Remembered
Bill Clinton writes about 1962, when a junior in high school:
Miss Lonnie Warneke, took our small class on a field trip to Newton County, my first trip into the heart of the Ozarks in North Arkansas, our Appalachia. Back then it was a place of breath taking beauty, hardscrabble poverty, and rough, all-consuming politics. The county had about six thousand people spread over more than a couple of hundred square miles in hills and hollows. Jasper, the county seat, had a little more than three hundred people, a WPA-built courthouse, two cafes, a general store, and one tiny movie theater, where our class went one night to watch an old Audie Murphy western. When I got into politics I came to know every township in Newton County, but I fell in love with it at sixteen, as we navigated the mountain roads, learning about the history, geology, flora, and fauna of the Ozarks. One day we visited the cabin of a mountain man who had a collection of rifles and pistols dating back to the Civil War, then explored a cave the Confederates had used for munitions storage. The guns still fired, the remnants of the arsenal were still in the cave, visible manifestation of how real a century-old conflict was in places where time passed slowly, grudges died hard, and handed-down memories hung on and on.
A partial of what appears on page 216 of the book, My Life, by former President Bill Clinton...
I finished my round of the Ozarks in Newton County, one of the most beautiful places in America, home of the Buffalo River, which recently had been named the first river protected by Congress under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. I stopped first in Pruitt, a small settlement on the Buffalo, to see Hilary Jones. Though he lived in a modest home, he was a road builder and might have been the wealthiest man in the county. His family’s Democratic heritage went all the way back to the Civil War and before, and he had the genealogical books to prove it. He was deeply rooted in his land along the river. His family had lost a lot of it in the Depression and when he came home from WW2, he worked for years to put it all back together again. The Buffalo’s designation as a protected river was his worst nightmare. Most landowners along the river were given life tenancies; they couldn’t sell the land to anyone but the government in their lifetimes and when they died, only the government could buy it. Because Hilary’s homestead was on the main highway, the government was going to take it by eminent domain in the near future and make it part of the headquarters operation...
I supported protecting the river but I thought the government should have let the old homesteaders keep their land under a scenic easement, which would have precluded any development or environmental degradation but allowed families to pass the land on from generation to generation. When I became President, my experience with the folks on the Buffalo gave me a better understanding than most Democrats of the resentments a lot of western ranches had when environmental considerations clashed with what they saw as their prerogative.
Hilary Jones finally lost his fight with the government. but it never killed his passion for politics; he moved into a new house and carried on. He spent a memorable night with Hillary and me in the White House. From the day I met him until the day I flew home from the White House to speak at his funeral, Hilary Jones was my man in Newton County. He embodied the wild, beautiful spirit of a special place I had loved since I first saw it at sixteen years old. END
The Mill Creek Trail just north of the Pruitt Bridge, starts at the bluffs of the Buffalo River, if you follow the trail you will come to Shaddox Cemetery. Hilary Jones' mother was a descendant of Sion Shaddox who donated the land for the cemetery. The trail head is where the Buffalo Motel was located that Bill Clinton mentioned. Hilary Jones later moved the motel/cabins next to his dad's place. At one time there was another motel on the other side of the river, the Pruitt Motel. The present day bridge at Pruitt was built in 1933. Shortly after the new bridge was opened, the Pruitt Motel was built where the old bridge had been. The motel cabins are long gone, a few concrete piers of the old bridge remain. As do the memories of paying 25 cents a carload to park at Pruitt Motel to go swimming in the Buffalo.
Kent Anderson interviewed serveral land holders along the Buffalo River, while working on a report funded by a grant from the Institute for Human Rights. The findings of his report can be found in: The People of the Buffalo; A Socio-Cultural Assessment of Inholders Along The Buffalo National River. After reading a letter from W. E. Bramhall, Land Acquisition Office, Buffalo National River, National Park Service, to Hilary Jones, August 25, 1977; Letter from Rienhart Johansen, Land Acquisition Office, Buffalo National River, National Park Service, to Hilary Jones, September 23, 1977; and after his interview with Hilary Jones, December 16-17, 1980, Anderson wrote the following:
Except for a brief period after World War II until 1966, when he re-acquired his land, Hilary Jones and his ancestors have owned property along the Buffalo River since before the Civil War. Jones had three parcels of land of a combined acreage of approximately 165, on both sides of the River. Currently, he is in the highway construction business, but for many years he also ran a private campground and the Buffalo Motel on the north shore of the River in Pruitt. Jones' land was among the most beautiful on the entire Buffalo and was the most photographed region of the area. Jones knew from the time the BNR was formed that the Park Service wanted his land, but no serious attempts at buying it were made until the mid-1970's. In 1977 the pressure became more intense. In the spring of that year, Hilary Jones' wife died of emphysema, leaving him with eight children. About two weeks later the Park Service brought appraisers to his land in an effort to hasten a sale. Jones was not present when this occurred, but his cousins ushered the government officials from the property. Late that same year, with the NPS offer for Jones' land in the neighborhood of $250,000, Hilary realized he might soon face condemnation proceedings. The NPS had warned of such a possibility due to what they called an 'impasse in negotiations and your failure to state an amount.' Jones simply did not want to sell his home and property which so many tourists had enjoyed over the years that he regularly received the same returning guests to the Buffalo. As Jones said, though, 'government is like the Lord. It giveth and taketh away.' Realizing his impending fate, he sold a small parcel of land across the river with a house on it to his friend Herman Haddock for $25,000. The Park Service had appraised the property at the very low price of only $5,000. Haddock spent about $800 to make the house fully usable and four months later, in ill health, he sold it to the NPS for $25,000, five times the amount the agency said it was worth less than one-half of a year prior. That transaction proved, said Jones, that the Park Service either deliberately contracts very low appraisals generally and then may choose to ignore them if it suits their purpose, of that they had deliberately singled out his house and lot for an unrealistically low appraisal.
Though he managed to have a small portion of his acreage escape condemnation, that was not the case with the bulk of his land. In late February of 1978, very soon after Roy Keeton, Sr. received his Declaration of Taking, Hilary Jones also met the same fate. Actually, the U.S. Marshal did not present the DT to Jones personally, but tactlessly left the document behind with two of his children, nine-year old Mark and 15-year old Donna. As he left, the Marshal told the children that he hoped their father would not be 'mad.'
At his trial for compensation, Hilary was awarded only about $300,000 for his land even though an independent appraiser from Fayetteville had said the land was worth $550,000. The jurors never got to see the attractive little cabins which used to house tourists on the River. The UPS had bulldozed them shortly after Jones vacated his property in mid-1978, according to the deadline on his Declaration of Taking.* (see note) Ironically, Jones ended up buying back his own home from the Park Service prior to the trial. It is a fine tri-level home with redwood siding which Hilary Jones had moved to the 13 upper acres he was allowed to retain. The Park Service has since cut several trees along the road to Jones' former campground, presumably to eventually widen the road for sane future NPS development. 'The thing they said we were going to do, they did,' said Jones.
For years most of the tourists who had stayed at Hilary Jones' motel or campground had told their very friendly host that they thought a National Park takeover of the Buffalo River would be the best thing for the whole area. Recently, Jones encountered a Mr. Green, one such longtime former regular guest of his land and, in addition, an expert 'floater.' Discouraged by recent Park Service treatment of himself and other tourists, Green told Jones that the federal takeover of the Buffalo River was a 'mistake' and that the River was much more enjoyable before the National River was created. The tourist also told Hilary Jones as he departed that he would never again return to Arkansas for a vacation.
 Note: The government did not dose down the cabins...Hilary moved the cabins and his house next to his dad's home along the highway and they have been rented out for ages.
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Take Care, Judy Tate
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