Archie Hull Jones was born in Davenport, Iowa, on March 3, 1873, to Theodore M. Jones, a photographer, and Mary Eliza Rice Jones. The family moved to Moline, Illinois, in the late 1870s, where T. M. Jones continued working as a photographer.
A decade later, the Jones family moved to Grand Junction, Colorado. Archie’s father was the vice president at the First National Bank of Grand Junction. Archie secured a position as an assistant bookkeeper at the bank. On April 20, 1892, Archie married Gertrude Alice Quinn in Salt Lake City.
In December 1892, Archie and his wife moved to Moline, where Archie studied photography with E. E. Mangold. The following April, the Joneses returned to Grand Junction. Archie bought Mary Dudley’s photographic studio in the Bonnell block. He updated the studio’s painted background and learned to use flashlight to illuminate interior spaces when photographing events outside the studio or in private homes.
Archie had a lively group of friends he would bicycle with and go hunting. After one hunting trip, Jones made a souvenir featuring small mounted photographs showing camp scenes and men in their hunting clothes. He was a member of a local bicycling club and was appointed local consul of the national organization, the League of American Wheelmen.
In early 1896, Jones started prospecting for ore in Leadville, Colorado, and near Westwater, Utah. In May of that year, Miss Florence Potter, a young woman from California, opened a photo studio in the space Jones had used. Even after closing his studio, Jones joined a new camera club that had formed in Grand Junction in the summer of 1896, comprised of nearly twenty amateur members.
Jones spent most of his career as a mining engineer based in Salt Lake City, Utah. He passed away on May 7, 1943, at his son’s home. His remains are buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City.
