Telling tall tales in the Siskiyous
by Bill Miller for
the Mail Tribune
Monday, May 20th 2019
When
a man on a mule who looks like Groucho Marx wearing a pith helmet rides by, you
just have to believe the man’s got a story to tell.
That
would be Hathaway Jones. He could spin 1,000 tales at the drop of a lip and you
never had to ask him.
Some
called him a colorful character, a true wit. Others said he was the biggest
liar Oregon had ever seen.
Born
in 1871 on the family’s land claim just north of Roseburg, Ivan Hathaway Jones
inherited his tall-tale ability from his father and grandfather, but Hathaway
would outclass them both.
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| Hathaway Jones |
Nearly
50 of the Jones boys and girls had crossed the prairie in 1852 from Indiana.
Heading the wagon column was Captain Jacob Jones, Hathaway’s great-grandfather.
Jacob bought an interest in a flour mill, and before he died in 1865 he passed
it on to his son, Isaac.
Isaac,
better known as Ike, liked to say he came to Siskiyou Mountains when all the
trees were just tiny saplings and the Rogue River was nothing but a crack
through the rocks.
Ike
claimed that his son, William, was suckled by a cougar and would only talk to
cougars until he was 9 years old.
William’s
favorite story was the time his son, Hathaway, was looking for gold and found a
6-inch-long nugget.
“Look
what I found, Dad!” Hathaway said proudly.
William
turned, spit out a chaw, and said, “Mighty fine hunk of ore son, but we’re just
too far from the railroad.”
By
the mid 1890s, William had turned miner, sold the flour mill, and moved with
his family into the Curry County wilderness along the Rogue River, just about
50 miles from the Pacific Ocean.
In
March 1898, Hathaway began his lifelong career — mail carrier along the Rogue
River. With just mules to talk to as he made his way over the perilous trails
that were barely etched into the canyon walls, Hathaway had plenty of time to
cook up some outrageous yarns.
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| Hathaway Jones Delivers Mail on the Rogue River |
Old
Betsy, his trusty rifle, was one of his favorites. Loaded with special black
powder cartridges, he said, she fired the slowest bullets anyone ever saw. Why,
maybe you remember the honking goose he shot. It was so high in the sky it took
all afternoon to finally hit the dang thing.
Then
there was that deer, two miles away, shot with his last bullet. By the time
Hathaway reached the animal he realized the deer had run into that very same
bullet 16 times, just trying to escape.
Sometimes
he loaded Old Betsy with salted bullets, explaining, “That danged rifle kills
at such a distance that if I didn’t salt them bullets, especially in warm
weather, the meat would spoil with age before I could get to it.”
Hathaway
Jones told his last story in August 1937. In the middle of the night, his
riderless horse led a team of five pack mules into Marial, the old post office
in Curry County. Hathaway had fallen off the trail and onto a sharp rock.
“He
soaked up the flavor of the pines,” said a reporter. “When he sat across from a
campfire, he always had a story to tell. We will miss him.”
Writer
Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous
history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or
WilliamMMiller.com.
