By Ken Edwards
Rancher, entrepreneur, truck driver, farmer, and builder. All of these terms apply to John Benton 'Jack' Jones, builder of Prescott's historic Hotel Vendome. Often confused with a miner of the same name, the "real" (for our purposes) Jack Jones was never involved in mining activity. Born in a small ranching community in central Texas in 1881, Jack left home at an early age because he couldn't get along with the rest of his family.
Although he was small in stature, he was plenty tough enough to ride the range. So he cowboyed his way west. In New Mexico, he married and had a son named Wray. But the marriage didn't last and Jack worked his way farther west.
His travels next brought him to the famous Hashknife Ranch, a spread of about a million acres near Holbrook, Arizona. Perhaps this is where he learned what another Hashknife cowboy told his young son several years later. "Age and size ain't got nothin' to do with it - you gotta want to be a cowboy. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut". That advice seems to have characterized much of the life of Jack Jones. Texans who rode for the Hashknife were known at the time as a tough and wild bunch.
By 1910, he had moved on to Yavapai County, in the Seligman-Ash Fork region. He must have been a good cowhand and saved his money. In 1915, he bought the 160-acre Triangle HC Ranch near Camp Wood, about 30 miles northwest of Prescott.
In March 1917, Jones sold his ranch and moved into Prescott. Two months later, he bought a house next to Morris Goldwater's place on Cortez Street. He also purchased an adjoining vacant lot. He wasted no time in starting construction of a small 30-room hotel on this lot, a half block south of the Courthouse Plaza. He named the new structure the Hotel Vendome. No one knows how he arrived at that name. There is a square called the Place Vendome in Paris, but how would an Arizona cowboy know anything about Paris in the early 1900's?
The November 1917 issue of Yavapai Magazine featured a brief article on the new building: "For the past two years Prescott has been suffering for want of houses. To meet the urgent demand for a place to live, the attractive Hotel Vendome on south Cortez Street has been opened early in November. The structure is strictly modern. It is built of red pressed brick and its comfortable home-like appearance must solve the problems of many who are interested in house hunting."
Jones didn't choose to operate the new hotel himself. He hired a manager named Clara Worthen. She was soon replaced by Josephine Brow, widow of a former part owner of the Palace Saloon on Montezuma Street. With Mrs. Brow in charge of the hotel, Jones sought other work and hired on as a truck driver for the Bashford-Burmister store on Gurley Street. But he continued to live next door to the hotel for five years.
In 1919, Jack Jones married young Marguerite Pyles. She was barely sixteen years old at the time, considerably less than half the age of her new husband. They soon had two children, Evalyne and Ralph. Twelve years after Ralph's birth, a third child, Lon Jackson, was born and, like his father, became known as 'Jack'. Evalyne served as an army nurse in WWII and then lived in Bagdad with her husband, Yavapai County deputy sheriff Sid Despain. Both Ralph and young Jack entered the military. Ralph is now a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and Jack a retired Navy Lieutenant Commander.
By 1924, Jones had tired of driving a delivery truck and returned to ranching. He sold the Vendome to Henry Brinkmeyer who owned a hotel and bakery on north Montezuma Street. The sale was really more of a trade than an outright sale, as Jones bought a 156 acre ranch from Brinkmeyer on the same date. It was located about 20 miles northwest of Prescott, and became known as the Spider Ranch.
The Jones family lived there for about eighteen years, after which they moved to a farm in Glendale, AZ, and operated a feedlot. Shortly afterward, Jack and Marguerite divorced. Marguerite got the farm, and Jack returned to Prescott where he became active buying and selling residential real estate in the Whipple and Moeller additions. Marguerite died in 2004 at the age of 100, outliving her former husband by nearly 50 years.
In February, 1947, Jack, now 65 years old, remarried, and the couple lived on Sheldon Street. The union lasted only three months, however, and ended in another divorce. After selling the Sheldon house, Jones moved back to Williamson Valley, buying a dry-land farm northwest of Granite Mountain. There he grew corn and raised a few head of cattle and hogs. His son-in-law went into partnership with him when the money ran low. He finally cashed in his chips in 1955, a poor man who had lived a rich life in Arizona.
During his lifetime, Jack Jones was a rather private individual and was often a bit cantankerous. He had a toughness of character that came from a long, often lonely, life as a cattleman. But he did like to tip a glass or two at the Palace Bar with other ranchers. Through his days on the Spider Ranch and later at his last farm, he lived without modern luxuries; no electricity, no telephone, no indoor plumbing. Such was often the life of a cowboy and rancher in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
(Ken Edwards is a tour coordinator for the Prescott Chamber of Commerce, and a tour guide at Sharlot Hall Museum.)
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb040f7i67). Reuse only by permission.
Jack Jones, (1881-1955), left his mark on Prescott by building the Hotel Vendome in 1917. The hotel was sold to Henry Brinkmeyer and soon afterward to John W. and Edith Dial, who resided in the hotel until 1927. This photograph is from the Dial Collection and was taken in the mid-1920's.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(buh7056p)
Reuse only by permission.
On a one-cent postcard, c.1930, the Hotel Vendome was presented as a fine hotel in Prescott. Check out the description and rates (!) on the postcard.