Walt Mason was born in Columbus, Ontario, Canada on May 4th, 1862. After immigrating to the United States in 1880, Mason worked with the Atchison Globe, St. Louis's humorous weekly The Hornet and several other newspapers in Nebraska, and Washington D.C. before moving to Emporia, Kansas in 1907.

Mason lived in Emporia from 1907 to 1920, and during this time he wrote for William Allan White's Emporia Gazette. He married Ella Foss of Wooster, Ohio, in 1893.

Mason published several books of rhyme, including Uncle Walt, the Poet Philosopher (1910), Business Prose Poems (1911), Rippling Rhymes (1913), Horse Sense in Verse Tense (1916), Walt Mason, His Book (1916), and Terse Verse (1917). Mason died in La Jolla, California on June 22nd, 1939.

[Information pulled from Connelley, William E. A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans. vol. 3 (Chicago: Lewis, 1918): 1368-1369; collection materials; and the June 22, 1939 Walt Mason obituary printed in the Emporia Gazette]