Leslie Jones began running rivers when he was just eleven years old, growing up in Missouri. He attended college at the University of Bozeman and engaged in engineering work in cities such as Minneapolis and Manhattan. He moved out west in 1953, after the passing of his father, and began to build boats and run rivers with his cousins Don and Bus Hatch. The two of them got Jones involved in running through Dinosaur Canyon with the Sierra Club in order to oppose the building of the Dinosaur Dam.
After that experience, Jones began to run rivers alone. His first solo run was Cataract, from Moab to Hite in just two days. In November of 1953, he traveled to Arizona to run the Grand Canyon. He traveled from Marble Canyon down to Bright Angel. He traveled back to the Grand Canyon in April 1954 and ran the river down to Bedrock. During this time he helped design the first large, commercial pontoon to run the Grand Canyon.
During his time running rivers in the Western United States, Jones began to create scroll maps. He wanted to make a map that could be more useful in the wind than the U.S.G.S. maps available, and ended up selling over 20,000 scroll maps over the years.
From the guide to the Leslie Jones Collection, 1953-1994, (Cline Library. Special Collections and Archives Department)
