Red Apple Inn

The Red Apple Inn is one of Arkansas’s best-known resorts. Part of a development along the shores of Greers Ferry Lake near Heber Springs (Cleburne County) known as Eden Isle, the inn was the creation of Little Rock (Pulaski County) insurance executive Herbert L. Thomas Sr. and his wife Ruby Thomas.

The Red Apple Inn opened in 1963, burned in 1964 from a kitchen fire, and reopened in 1965. Herbert Thomas hired architects for the inn, while Ruby Thomas supplied recipes used in the dining room. She later wrote a book titled Feasts of Eden: Gracious Country Cooking from the Red Apple Inn. The inn still uses many of her recipes.

Herbert Thomas was born on February 14, 1899, in rural Ashley County. He formed the insurance company Mutual Assessment Co. in 1923. By 1925, there were more than 10,000 policyholders, many of whom were rural Arkansans. Thomas later incorporated First Pyramid Life Insurance Co. of America and set up shop in the Southern Trust Building in downtown Little Rock. He purchased the structure in 1937 and renamed it the Pyramid Life Building. The company moved to west Little Rock in 1980, though the downtown building continued to be called Pyramid Place.

Thomas was chairman of the Little Rock Municipal Water Commission from 1937 to 1940 and led the state Highway Audit Commission from 1951 to 1953. He helped form First Arkansas Development Finance Corp., which was incorporated in 1958 to fund industrial expansion across the state. Thomas served on the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees from 1943 to 1951 and was instrumental in 1948 in the admission of the first Black student to the University of Arkansas School of Law, Silas Hunt. Thomas also was involved in banking, acquiring City National Bank of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) in the mid-1950s as well as Citizens Bank of Booneville (Logan County) in 1963.

Thomas had a close relationship with members of the state’s congressional delegation. He figured prominently in President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Heber Springs for the dedication of Greers Ferry Dam. Herbert and Ruby Thomas had come to enjoy the area during visits in the 1950s. In 1961, they purchased 500 acres.

After the Flood Control Act was passed by Congress in 1938, engineers began surveying sites for a proposed dam on the Little Red River. Funding was hard to come by, and the dam was not completed until 1962. People had been buying bottomland along the river for years in hopes they could sell it to the federal government for a profit or end up with lakefront property. No one knew exactly what the water level would be, but Herbert Thomas received inside information from members of the Arkansas congressional delegation.

The couple bought property known as Estes Hill. Knowing that islands in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lakes could not be privately owned, Thomas built a causeway that would be above lake level so that what would become Eden Isle could not be classified as an island. The causeway had to be built before the lake was filled. Once the lake was completed, 400 of the couple’s 500 acres were above water.

Herbert and Ruby Thomas told friends they wanted to build the finest vacation destination in that part of the country. They traveled to Europe to buy art and furnishings for the inn. No expense was spared. Fourteen miles of roads were paved, and a golf course, swimming pools, tennis courts, and a marina were constructed. Lots were sold for $3,000, and homes started at $12,000.

Noted architect E. Fay Jones designed a cottage on Eden Isle known as Stoneflower as a weekend retreat for landscape architects Bob Shaheen and Curt Goodfellow and their families. Stoneflower was completed in 1965 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

In 1978, the Red Apple Executive Conference Center opened inside a new addition to the inn. It accommodated groups of up to 120. In 1980, Herbert Thomas retired as First Pyramid chairman and focused on development of Eden Isle until his death in March 1982.

The Red Apple Inn was sold to Melvyn Bell, who made his fortune in the hazardous waste business. Bell expanded his real estate holdings too quickly and fell millions of dollars into debt. He died in July 2006 at age sixty-eight following a long battle with cancer. In 1995, Dick and Patti Upton of Heber Springs spent $4.2 million to buy the inn. They then spent millions more on improvements to a facility that had fallen into disrepair. Dick Upton once said in a deposition for a lawsuit involving the marina at the complex: “I had so much money invested in the Red Apple Inn, I might have been in the middle of a divorce if I had invested more.” The Uptons were careful to preserve things Herbert and Ruby Thomas had brought to Arkansas from Europe, including a sixteenth-century wrought-iron gate that was purchased in Spain.

For additional information:
Red Apple Inn. https://www.redappleinn.com/ (accessed February 22, 2024).

Silva, Rachel. “Walks through History: Shaheen-Goodfellow Weekend Cottage or ‘Stoneflower.” November 13, 2010. https://www.arkansasheritage.com/docs/default-source/ahpp-documents/sandwiching-tour-scripts/stoneflower-tour-script-201082fa2926-4abe-480e-8813-79a089d286b5.pdf (accessed February 22, 2024).

Rex Nelson
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette