Ted and Pat Jones, husband and wife, stand with their horse and a canine friend on their farm in Williamsburg.
Published by
on
A Fortune 500 financial services firm, the nation’s longest rail-trail bike path, a 900-acre prairie and a state park at the confluence of America’s two greatest rivers all have Ted and Pat Jones in common.
Pat, with her love of soil science, was one of the first women to graduate with a degree in agriculture from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Ted was raised in St. Louis and grew up in a privileged and successful family, but even as a child he was a farmer at heart. The couple could have done anything and lived anywhere they desired.
After serving in the military in World War II, Ted went to work for his father’s investment firm where he was the managing partner from 1968 to 1980. During that time, he established the firm’s signature small town brokerage system and expanded to 300 branch offices.
“Ted wanted to live in the country and bring the same kind of investment advice to those living there that was available to Edward Jones’ customers in the city,” said Dan Burkhardt, who worked with Ted at Edward Jones. Following his retirement, Burkhardt founded Magnificent Missouri, an organization whose mission is to conserve and increase appreciation of Katy Trail State Park and the last 100 miles of the Missouri River Valley. “Ted identified a market that no one else did. The first Jones office outside of St. Louis opened in Mexico, Missouri, in the 1950s, not far from Ted and Pat’s farm near Williamsburg.”
Thankfully, the Joneses cared little about the trappings of wealth and instead chose to plant trees and restore prairies in Missouri. Together, their names are synonymous with conservation, nature and parks. Benevolent and business-savvy, the couple left an unrivaled natural legacy for Missourians. Pat was fond of saying, “We didn’t have any children, so we just adopted the state.”
The Joneses lived simply, despised waste and disregarded convention. According to Burkhardt, what they cared about was creating places where visitors from around the world — people they would never
know — could experience rural Missouri and enjoy its peaceful countryside.
“Ted loved driving the Midwest, stopping in to visit with Edward Jones’ representatives,” Burkhardt recalled. “I traveled with him on several of these trips. Always looking to save money, Ted’s favorite way to travel was with a cooler in the back seat packed with lunch meat and cold drinks for lunch at a roadside picnic table, preferably with a historic marker.
If an overnight stay was needed, his preference was to bunk two to a room! Ted’s frugality and business genius allowed him to have the resources to spend conserving land and creating public spaces.”
While visiting Edward Jones offices, Ted had the opportunity to take a bike ride on America’s first rail-trail in Sparta, Wisconsin. He immediately recognized to the value of rail-trails to rural communities and returned to Missouri a believer.
Parents of the Katy Trail
In 1968, around the same time that Ted became managing partner of Edward D. Jones & Co., Congress passed the National Trails System Act. Within two decades, Missouri trail supporters pushed to use this legislation to convert the right-of-way of the former Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad into a recreational trail. Farmers and landowners along the right-of-way opposed this use and demanded the land be returned to the original owners.
Concerned that legislators in the Missouri General Assembly would not approve needed funding and that ongoing lawsuits over the right-of-way would stop the project, Ted and Pat Jones donated more than $2 million to cover expenses related to finishing the trail.
“I got to be a fly on the wall as Ted cajoled, convinced, charmed and fought to make the trail a reality,” Burkhardt said. “During the 1980s, when Ted was immersed in the trail, I was traveling with him on business for Edward Jones and visiting him and Pat at their farm. I saw first-hand how much time, travel, aggravation and difficulty Ted contended with to make the Katy Trail happen. From the outside, it may have appeared that he simply wrote a check, but nothing could have been further from the truth.”
On April 28, 1990, Ted and Pat attended the official opening of the first section of the new Katy Trail State Park. Though he was able to witness the opening ceremonies, Ted did not live long enough to see the trail’s completion. He passed away Oct. 3, 1990, less than six months after the grand opening. Due to his business legacy and his role in creating the Katy Trail, Ted was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians in 2015.
Those who didn’t know the Joneses may have thought they were avid cyclists, and the reason for their dedication to creating the trail was simply that. However, Burkhardt said that was not the case. While it’s true Ted and Pat took a bike trip together through the Ozarks while in high school and had fond memories of that ride, the underlying reasons for wanting to bring Katy Trail State Park to fruition were about more than cycling.
Ted and Pat wanted to share the Missouri countryside with others — to give those who weren’t as fortunate a way to see the crops growing and the river flowing. They also wanted to bring new life to the small communities along the trail, to bring economic vitality back to places that lost it.
Missouri’s Prairie Godmother
A true conservation champion, Pat Jones spent much of her life advocating for parks and the preservation of land. Pat and Ted were strong supporters of Missouri State Parks and the Missouri Department of Conservation during their lives.
After securing the Katy Trail, the Joneses offered seed money for the Rock Island corridor as well, to try to fulfill their vision of connecting Kansas City to St. Louis — Arrowhead to the Arch. Although very close in 1993, the corridor was unable to be finalized within the allotted time.
Pat wanted a place anyone could come to learn about environmental education. She crafted a creative agreement that placed her Williamsburg farm in the hands of the University of Missouri’s School of Natural Resources and the Missouri Department of Conservation, allowing it to be used for research projects, education and to host public groups. In 1997, the farm became the 911-acre Prairie Fork Conservation Area. The agreement allowed Pat to remain at her home until her death Dec. 17, 2018.
More than 130 groups, primarily children, visit the area annually. Activities held there brought Pat great joy. She greeted thousands of school children with her trademark, “Learn, get dirty and have fun.”
“Pat Jones was an amazing woman,” said Amber Edwards, the education coordinator at Prairie Fork Conservation Area, in Callaway County. “I’ll always remember her curiosity. Independently and together, she and Ted were dynamite.”
Edwards said Pat followed the “early to bed, early
to rise” adage, often retiring to her bedroom around 6 p.m., but was up again at 4 a.m. or earlier. Once up, she was busy all day long, even in late age.
“Pat loved to learn. She was very well-read and loved her land. You could find her on a mower when she was in her 90s,” Edwards said. “She’d take her Gator out, ride around, exploring and investigating.”
The Joneses loved to share their land and knowledge. In 1986, she and Ted helped the Missouri Department of Conservation acquire her family’s farm near Eureka. It became the Hilda Young Conservation Area. In the early 2000s, leading up to the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial, MoDNR and state park officials had the opportunity to obtain land at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Pat once again stepped up with a significant donation to help it along. The state honored her and Ted’s numerous contributions by naming it Edward “Ted” and Pat Jones-Confluence Point State Park at its dedication in 2004.
Pat also made contributions to The Nature Conservancy for the acquisition of Dunn Ranch Prairie in Harrison County; to Scenic Missouri for its efforts to reduce billboards and enhance natural beauty along Missouri highways; to the University of Missouri’s School of Natural Resources in support of conservation education research; and to the Missouri State Parks Foundation for a bicycle and pedestrian bridge across the Missouri River to connect the Katy Trail to Jefferson City.
Pat said, “If you care about something a great deal, give it away to someone else that cares about it, too. Then it can go on forever.”
Update: Rock Island Trail State Park
On June 30, 2023, the Rock Island Trail became an official Missouri state park. The park includes the 47-mile developed section between Pleasant Hill and Windsor, and another 144 miles of undeveloped trail between Windsor and Beaufort. The inclusion of a 12-mile section near Beaufort, currently under negotiation, will bring the total length of Rock Island Trail State Park to almost 204 miles of trail.
Within the 144-mile undeveloped section, several communities have received grants to begin development in their area, city or county. These communities are expected to begin construction in 2024. Together, they have raised over $3 million and will complete about 13 miles of trail:
- Cole Camp received a Transportation Alternatives Program grant to build a trailhead and 1 mile of trail, connecting Hi Lonesome Prairie Conservation Area to Hwy U, just north of Cole Camp.
- Versailles received a Transportation Alternatives Program grant to build 2 miles of trail.
- Eldon received a Recreational Trails Program grant to build 1.4 miles of trail and a trailhead near its downtown area.
- Belle received an Recreational Trails Program grant to build a trailhead and 1.6 miles of trail.
- Owensville received a Transportation Alternatives Program grant to build 2.6 miles of trail.
- Gasconade County received a Transportation Alternatives Program grant to build 2.8 miles of trail from Owensville city limits to Soap Creek Bridge.
- Gerald raised private funds to build 1 mile of trail within the city limits. Construction began in spring 2024 and is the first community in the 144-mile undeveloped section to begin.
