Jones, Holway R.

Holway Roy Jones served as Sierra Club Associate Secretary (1959-1960) and was on Board of Directors (1974-1976). During which time he was chairman of Publications Committee (1974-1976) and "Fifth Officer" (1974-1976). Jones was a librarian at University of California (1951-1963) and, later, at University of Oregon (1963-1982). He gathered these materials as a resource in writing "John Muir and the Sierra Club: The Battle for Yosemite" (1965).

Holway Roy Jones was born in New Orleans October 11, 1922. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and that is where he began his career as city and urban planning librarian. In California he became involved in wilderness activities, and joined the Sierra Club in 1945. These early experiences inspired Jones's research for his master's thesis and his book, John Muir and the Sierra Club; the Battle for Yosemite (Sierra Club, 1965). Jones continued both his library and conservation careers in Oregon, where he worked for over 20 years at the University of Oregon Library and became active in many conservation groups.

Holly Jones, as he was known in California and throughout the Pacific Northwest, was a librarian by profession but his passion was conservation and love of the land. Born in New Orleans, October 11, 1922, Holway Roy Jones received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and it was there he began his career as a city and urban planning librarian. It was in California, too, that he experienced his first taste of the wilderness when he backpacked into Sequoia National Park’s Kaweah country in 1942. Three years later he joined the Sierra Club, and participated in one of the club’s early float trips down the Yampa and Green rivers. Almost every summer in the years after that time, he and his wife and their two sons shared wilderness experiences in different parts of the west.

Jones’s early wilderness experiences in California provided the impetus for his research for his master’s thesis which culminated in his book, John Muir and the Sierra Club; the Battle for Yosemite, published by the Sierra Club in 1965.

It was the Sierra Club, in which he became a national leader, which gave focus to his conservation efforts. He served on its Board of Directors, 1973-1976, was chairman of the Publications Committee, 1974-1976, and of the National Wilderness Committee, 1972-1974, 1976-1978. During his tenure with the NWC he became the major player in the fight to save French Pete, conservationists’ long but finally successful effort to stop the logging of the French Pete Valley drainage, which had been removed from the Three Sisters Wilderness in 1957.

Jones was one of the early advocates of the Oregon Wilderness Coalition, serving as its president 1976-78, and he was active in many other organizations including the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth, North Cascades Conservation Council, Oregon Environmental Council and the Friends of the Three Sisters Wilderness, as well as being an officer and leader of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Sierra Club.

No biographical sketch, as such, appears in the Jones Papers, but brief biographical information contained in an affidavit dated [May 8, 1972] was drawn upon for this account, as were two standard biographical dictionaries of librarianship.