The Last of the Plainsmen
New York: The Outing Publishing Company, 1908. 1st Edition. 8vo. Good. Item #18610
A 1908 1st Edition featuring the extremely rare signature of iconic Wild West cowboy and frontiersman, Buffalo Jones, the first Game Warden of Yellowstone National Park and the subject of this Zane Grey work.
Illustrated cloth with titling stamped in gilt. Square tight binding. Clean interior, save for previous owner signature at top of front endpaper and the word 'read' at the bottom of same. 314pp. While the interior is quite nice, the exterior binding has significant wear, with rubbing, soiling, edge wear and foxing.
"Charles Jesse Jones (1844 – 1919), was an American frontiersman, farmer, rancher, hunter, conservationist, and politician.
"Like any hide hunter on the Plains, he wanted to kill as many as he could, as quickly as he could. But Charles Jesse Jones wasn't the typical hide man. He was an innovator, an adventurer, a romantic, a visionary. And once his vision shifted from the momentary gain of slaughtering buffalo to the lasting work of preserving them, he found his true calling—and his legacy.
"He renounced buffalo hunting, bought ranch land and—for a while, anyway—settled down.
"The Joneses homesteaded 160 acres in Sequoyah (later Finney) County, Kansas, where Jones helped found Garden City. He lobbied successfully both to bring the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad through town and to have Garden named the county seat. He donated land for a courthouse and commercial block and served as Garden City's first mayor.
"Jones soon embarked on a new adventure. By the mid-1880s, the buffalo trade was as dead as the hides. “The American bison,” one newspaper reported, “the original wearer of bangs and a second cousin of the first wearer of the bustle, the Assyrian cow, as a roamer of the plains is no more.” Jones recognized the grim toll his trade had taken, as well as the imminent danger that buffalo might vanish entirely. The realization compelled him to take measures to preserve the species. Jones began collecting buffalo. With the coming of the railroad, the continent's single massive bison herd was split in two, a northern herd and a smaller southern herd. First, he gathered what straggling remnants he could find on the Great Plains, particularly calves. He captured 14 calves in 1886." - wiki
"Through letters, telegrams and travel he sought any specimens alive on the continent. An alliance with pioneer Texas rancher Charles Goodnight, who'd been following a similar notion, brought him a goodly number of beasts. So did purchases from Montana rancher Charles Allard. A trip to Manitoba netted 83 head, tweaking the Canadian government in the process."
Overall a nice Zane Grey 1st Edition with a direct tie to Buffalo Jones.
Price: $325.00