Heber Springs

Heber Springs sits at a strange and wonderful hydrological hinge point, where the icy tailwater released from Greers Ferry Dam feeds one of the best trout fisheries in the country, while just upstream the dammed lake itself warms into a classic Ozark summer playground. Lia and I arrived not quite understanding this until our first morning, when we waded into water cold enough to ache within minutes, then spent that same afternoon swimming in a lake warm enough to linger in for hours. Few small towns offer such a complete, contradictory package of outdoor recreation within a ten-minute drive.

The Little Red River

The Little Red River below Greers Ferry Dam holds the world-record brown trout, a 40-pound-plus giant caught here in 1992, and the tailwater still draws serious anglers from across the country chasing browns and rainbows in the cold, clear current. We hired a local guide who poled us downstream in a jon boat at first light, mist rising off the water, showing Lia how to drift a fly past submerged logs where the big fish hold. We didn’t land anything record-worthy, but a fat fourteen-inch rainbow felt like plenty of reward for freezing our hands off before sunrise.

Greers Ferry Lake

Just north of town, Greers Ferry Lake spreads across more than 40,000 acres of clear, spring-fed water framed by forested Ozark ridgelines, its shoreline dotted with coves perfect for swimming and cliff-jumping. We rented a pontoon boat for the afternoon out of one of the lake’s marinas and puttered into a quiet cove, cutting the engine to drift and swim in water so clear we could see our own shadows on the sandy bottom ten feet down. Sailboats worked the open water in the distance, and the whole scene felt like a well-kept secret compared to Arkansas’s more famous lakes.

Downtown and the old spring

Heber Springs takes its name from a set of natural springs around which the town grew, now preserved as a small park downtown where a limestone spring house still trickles cold water into a stone basin. We wandered the compact town square afterward, its brick storefronts holding antique shops and a soda fountain that still makes phosphates the old-fashioned way, before finishing the day with fried catfish at a lakeside restaurant, our clothes still faintly damp from the afternoon swim.

Getting There

Heber Springs sits about an hour and fifteen minutes north of Little Rock via Highway 5, a pleasant drive that climbs steadily into Ozark foothills as it goes. There’s no commercial airport in town, so flying into Little Rock’s Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport and renting a car is the standard approach; once in Heber Springs, a car remains useful for reaching the scattered lake marinas and river access points around the dam.