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Wesley Livsey Jones was born on an Illinois farm in 1863, just days after his father died while serving in the Union army. Jones became a lawyer, and at the age of 26 he moved his practice to North Yakima (now Yakima). He quickly became involved with the Republican Party and was nominated to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1898. The Republican slate in Washington swept the elections, whisking Jones into office. He served in the House for ten years before running successfully for the U.S. Senate in 1908. He described himself a “conservative progressive”; a desire for compromise and an aversion to controversy characterized his political style. When many Republicans bolted to form the Progressive Party in 1912, Jones remained a “regular” Republican but moderated the dispute and helped pave the way for the re-integration of Washington’s Progressives in 1916.

Jones rose to become the Republican whip and served as chairman of the powerful Appropriations and Commerce Committees. Jones unflaggingly promoted federal investment in the Pacific Northwest; he led the development of the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, successfully championed several federal irrigation projects in the region, and drafted the Jones Merchant Marine Act of 1920, which stipulated that only American ships could carry cargo between American ports (which made Alaska dependent on Seattle-owned shipping firms). Jones also helped craft the compromise which became the Federal Water Power Act of 1920. Jones staunchly advocated Prohibition throughout his career and sponsored several failed bills to tighten enforcement of the Volstead Act in the 1920s. While this “dry” stance initially increased his popularity, Jones seemed out of touch and puritanical in the late-1920s as Washingtonians increasingly viewed Prohibition as a failure. Jones ran for a fifth term in 1932, but was hampered both by deteriorating health and by association with an unpopular party headed by the unpopular President Hoover. Just as a Republican landslide had swept him into Congress thirty-four years earlier, a Democratic landslide swept him out in 1932 and replaced him with the liberal Homer Bone. Jones died less than three weeks after his defeat.