During World War II, he was stationed in New Guinea and sent anthropological collections back to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.
His other son, Warren Phelps Jones, managed an electro-chemical manufacturing plant in Huntsville, until his retirement in 1994.
As State Geologist of Alabama, Walter B. Jones directed research on many topics including economic minerals, surface and groundwater, petroleum, geologic mapping, fossils, caves, and archaeology.
He was the first director of the State Oil and Gas Board of Alabama, putting wise regulations into place before the first large discoveries of petroleum were made.
The collections of the Alabama Museum of Natural History (until 1961 an arm of the Geological Survey) were greatly increased under his direction.