For as long as most people in Jones can remember, Beaty-Mulhausen Park has had one job. You go there to fish the stocked pond off Main Street, walk the half-mile trail around it, let the kids loose on the playground, maybe reserve a pavilion for a birthday. It is the kind of park a small town takes for granted precisely because it never asks anything of you. It just sits there, 3.2 acres of quiet, doing what it has always done.
That changed this summer. On June 25, 2026, the Town of Jones posted something new to its own website: Beaty-Mulhausen is now open to approved commercial and community uses. Food truck owners, vendors, small businesses, event organizers, community groups. Three weeks later, on July 17 through 19, the park hosted Hatchlahoma, the fire-roasted Hatch green chile weekend run by Ruzycki Farms. The town called it, in its own announcement, the first major commercial event ever held at the park.
If you live in Jones and drove past that weekend wondering why there were tents and smoke where the fishing dock usually is, this is why. The pond didn't move. The rules around it did.
A Park That Used to Say No
Every small town has a piece of public land that quietly resists being used for anything beyond its original purpose. Beaty-Mulhausen was that for Jones. The park shows up in state fishing guides as a Close to Home water managed by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, stocked and maintained under an agreement between the town and the state, with a fish feeder, spider-block fish attractors, and an aeration system built to keep the water healthy for anglers rather than crowds. The listed limits reflect that purpose: three rods per person, three hooks per line, an aggregate daily catch of three panfish, trout, or catfish combined, no cast nets allowed. This is infrastructure built around a rod and a lawn chair, not a stage or a food truck line.
That is exactly why the June announcement is worth noticing. The town didn't quietly let one event slip through. It published a standing policy, open to any qualifying vendor or organizer, which means Hatchlahoma was not a one-off favor. It was the first test of a door the town had just decided to leave open.
The Weekend That Proved the Point
Ruzycki Farms is not new to Jones. Mike and Emily Ruzycki run a five-acre property on North Choctaw Road, with one acre in active market production, growing chemical-free vegetables from non-GMO seed and selling through a CSA subscription, a weekly farm market, and relationships with local restaurants. Their Hatch green chile weekend has run at the farm itself for at least the past two seasons, drawing people out to Choctaw Road to pre-order roasted bushels straight from New Mexico peppers fired on-site.
Moving that event into town, onto park land, is a different proposition than running it on your own five acres. It means parking for a crowd that isn't scaled to a farm driveway. It means portable restrooms, food safety sign-off, and coordination with a town government instead of just a property owner's own logistics. The fact that Jones said yes to that, on land that has spent its whole existence managed for anglers and dog walkers, is the actual story here. Not that a farm held a chile roast. That a fishing pond became a venue.
Here's what the park looks like on paper, for anyone weighing whether it can actually handle what got asked of it in July:
Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
Address | 320 E. Main St., Jones, OK |
Surface area | 3.2 acres |
Shoreline length | 0.5 miles |
Max depth | 8 feet |
Amenities | Playground, restrooms, pavilions, walking trail |
Fishing management | Oklahoma Close to Home program, fish feeder, aeration system |
First major commercial booking | Hatchlahoma, Ruzycki Farms, July 17 to 19, 2026 |
A 3.2-acre pond is not a fairground. It is, however, exactly the kind of modest footprint a small town can turn over to a weekend event without shutting down the rest of the park for a season. That scale is probably why the policy reads as a genuine opening rather than a one-time exception.
The Older Calendar Still Runs Underneath
None of this replaces what Jones already does with a Saturday. The town's civic rhythm for the back half of the year hasn't changed, and it is worth knowing if you haven't circled it yet.
Old Timers Day is the one downtown Jones actually organizes around. Based on the pattern of the last few years, including a Saturday, October 4 date in 2025, expect it to land on the first Saturday of October again this year. The day runs on a set list that hasn't needed updating in a while: a parade down Main Street, a baking contest for cakes and pies, stick horse races for the kids, a kiss the pig contest, bounce houses, live entertainment, and food from local vendors. The Jones Kiwanis Club runs a car show alongside it, with a $30 registration fee, awards handed out mid-afternoon, and a portion of proceeds going back to the club.
Later in the year, the Kiwanis Club runs the town's Christmas parade, starting at the high school and moving down Main Street before ending, notably, right back at Beaty-Mulhausen Park, where a children's choir has sung to close out the evening. That detail matters more now than it did a year ago. The park was already the town's informal finish line for its biggest annual gatherings. It just wasn't, until this summer, a place outside businesses could formally book for their own.
What a Regular Week Still Looks Like
Most weeks in Jones don't involve a festival at all, and the town's June announcements make clear that's still the point of the park day to day. Right before the commercial-use policy went up, the town was still handling ordinary small town business: a 30-yard dumpster placed at the park's east side starting June 24 to help residents clear storm debris, and a separate post the following day reminding families that with school out and the days getting longer, the park's playground, pavilions, and pond were still there for exactly the kind of low-key use they've always served.
Main Street itself has kept building out around that same rhythm. If you're grabbing food before or after a walk around the pond, the options have grown past what a small town Main Street usually offers: Shuff's Main St Grill and Longhorn Cafe for a sit-down plate, Jorge's Mexican Kitchen, Raven Rock Pizza, Frosted Artisan Bakery and The Saucee Sicilian for something sweeter or more specific, and Junction Coffee if you just need a cup before the trail loop. None of that is new because of Hatchlahoma. It's the baseline Jones residents already had, and it's the same stretch of Main Street the October parade will roll down.
Reading the Rest of the Year
The thing to watch isn't whether Hatchlahoma comes back to the park next summer, though it might. It's whether the town's June policy gets used again before Old Timers Day arrives in October. A standing rule that only ever gets tested once isn't really a policy change. A standing rule that gets used two or three times before the calendar year is out is a small town quietly deciding its public park has more than one job now.
If you already live here, you'll notice it the same way you noticed the tents in July: something at the park that wasn't there before, backed by a decision the town made in June and never made a fuss about. That's usually how the real shifts in a place this size happen. Not with a ribbon cutting. With an announcement posted to a town website that most people scroll past until the weekend it actually shows up on Main Street.
Wondering what a shift like this means for property values or timing a move in Jones? That's a different conversation, and one Wyatt Poindexter is glad to have when you're ready. Request a private, white-glove consultation to talk through what's actually happening in this market, on this street, right now.
