The first time I steered my truck onto the grounds of Lindsey’s Resort outside of Heber Springs was more than a decade ago. I had heard about this family-owned and family-operated outdoor destination since I was a child. Over the years, I had many friends, acquaintances and co-workers tell me that going there to fish the Little Red River for trout was one thing I definitely needed to add to my list of things to do.
All of those suggestions were right on the mark, as from the first moment I walked into the office, I began to feel like just another extended member of the Lindsey family. My wife and I ate dinner at the resort’s Pot O’ Gold restaurant during that trip and heard the unsolicited testimonial of a young waitress from Searcy. That night, she professed that the same familial feeling existed for all the actual Lindseys, their staff members and their guests.
Of course, the Lindsey’s Resort that outdoorsmen from The Natural State and beyond Arkansas’ borders have come to know and cherish is just another of those overnight success stories that actually took several years in the making. In fact, the resort will mark a milestone anniversary next year.
While the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission turns 100 in 2015, Lindsey’s Resort will lay claim to calling the shores of the Little Red home for exactly half that time. Traveling through that half-century, the story of Lindsey’s Resort has just as many twists and turns as the river that tumbles by it through the Ozarks.
In the beginning …
“In 1965, we had two rental rooms, and that was the little two-story building that still stands across from the office and restaurant,” Billy Lindsey said, starting to relate the story of the resort established by his mother and father, Bill and Mavis Lindsey. Billy also noted that the resort offered “12 boats and six motors, a five-stall dock with a small office on the dock where we served our customers through a service window.”
At the time, guests could rent a boat for $2 per day or a boat and motor for $6 per day. One night in Cabin No. 1 was a whopping $6 per night, while Cabin No. 2 was even pricier at $9. Meanwhile, a guided trip for two people was $15 per day.
“Twenty-five dollars gave you a heck of a weekend for two people,” Billy said, laughing about how minimal those rates seem a half-century later.
While Billy has worked at the resort from the beginning, when he was all of 9 years old, he said those early years also saw his sister, Terri, and his maternal grandmother, Ella Fletcher, assisting his mom — known affectionately by resort regulars as Nana — with many of the day-to-day operations at Lindsey’s. Bill Lindsey was constantly busy trying to expand and improve the resort.
That, however, was before the Lindsey’s Resort name was synonymous with trout fishing on the Little Red River.
“Times were very lean, and Dad worked outside the business to help keep the bills paid and spent the remainder of his time working on growing our fledgling business,” Billy explained before adding, “He was, in every sense of the word, a tourism pioneer in Arkansas.”
This dream of Bill and Mavis Lindsey may have arrived on the Little Red’s shores in 1965, but the trout that would make the name famous among outdoorsmen did not come until two years later.
Those stockings were mitigation from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers following completion of the Greers Ferry Dam on the Little Red River. The dam had made the habitat for several miles below the structure unsuitable for the smallmouth bass that had been a mainstay of the river’s attraction for anglers.
Finally, two years after the stockings were to begin, the first trout hit the waters of the Little Red in April 1967. It was a milestone event in more ways than one, though. As the workers tried to get the fish ready to be placed into the river, one of the trout jumped from its temporary hold in a 5-gallon bucket. Mavis Lindsey then picked up the fish and carried it to the water’s edge before tossing it into its new home.
Years of additions and upgrades to the resort followed in the form of duplex-style mobile homes built in Jacksonville, covered porches added to the buildings, more boats and motors. … The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.
Building on a name
In 1975, Billy Lindsey decided to go against his parents’ wishes and leave college to work in the family business. Three years later, the trio officially formed a partnership. A series of dominoes fell soon after that, with the addition of a swimming pool in 1978, the Pot O’ Gold restaurant in 1980 and the 1992 moves to add a conference center and roughly double the resort’s cabin capacity.
While many of the changes were physical and obvious in nature, one of the bigger moves was the addition of Billy’s sister and her husband, Terri and Sonny Martin, as the operators of the restaurant when it opened. Sonny Martin had been a longtime on-air personality with radio stations in the Little Rock market, ending that stint with a position at KSSN when he and his wife made the move to the resort.
“Terri and Sonny have helped to handle the overall management and the restaurant operations ever since,” Billy said, then adding, “And they’ve done about anything else that had to be done to keep the ball roling here for many years.”
The resort and the trout fishing available in the chilled waters of the Little Red had garnered attention from anglers in the state, the region, the country and even abroad.
“We have had visitors here from all 50 states and many foreign countries,” Billy said, then listing, “Russia, Japan, Vietnam, China, Africa, South America, Spain, Italy, France, Central America, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland” and other places as locations called home by the resort’s far-flung travelers.
Those guests have also included names that are familiar to many because of their roles in the political, entertainment or outdoor world. Autographs, photographs and stories grace the walls of the resort’s restaurant and include the likes of former St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog, fishing legend Bill Dance, former Gov. and U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Arkansas musical talent Jim Ed Brown, singer Rex Allen Jr., Channel 11 KTHV meteorologist Tom Brannon, longtime radio personality Bob Robbins, and noted outdoor writer and author Keith “Catfish” Sutton.
Two of Billy’s children, Jared Lindsey and Amanda Lindsey Underwood, were growing up in the family business like their father and aunt. While Jared toiled to increase awareness of the fly-fishing opportunities that existed on the Little Red River, Amanda worked in the office through her college years after helping in the restaurant when she was a child.
The Lindsey’s Resort family was reaping the rewards of hard work and hospitality. Plus, the real-estate agent mantra of “location, location, location” was paying big dividends.
On May 9, 1992, Howard “Rip” Collins of nearby Heber Springs landed a trout for the record books. The fish was weighed and certified at 40 pounds, 4 ounces. It became the world-record German brown trout at the time and still is the International Game Fish Association 4-pound-line-class world-record holder and AGFC state-record holder.
Time changes everything
The death of Bill Lindsey, whom family and friends called Pop, marked the summer of 2009. With the patriarch of the resort gone, Billy knew that more responsibility would fall on everyone.
That “rocked the very core of our family and business,” Billy said, calling his dad “one of my best friends, my mentor, my business partner and a lot of my inspiration.”
Just three weeks prior to Bill Lindsey’s death, the family also lost “Poppa” John Davis, the father of Billy’s wife, Carol.
“He was a mainstay at our annual media weekend,” Billy said. “He handled the big smoker for the Boston butts and did the homemade chili that was served at those events.”
Billy went on to credit several family members and staff members with stepping up following those deaths, including his wife, who assumed the role of head of housekeeping and, along with Terri, “handled so much of the renovation planning and decorating of the renovated cabins and lodge rooms” that the resort undertook in 2011.
Furthermore, Billy said, “Lindsey White, Terri and Sonny’s son, has been such an important part of the operation and management of the restaurant and office, and mine and Carol’s sons — Colton and Conner, although still in college and high school, respectively, have contributed to front-office, guiding and dock work in recent years.”
Those collective efforts were to “bring our facilities back to the level that had been our trademark for so many years,” he said. Handling Bill Lindsey’s and John Davis’ deaths, moving on and improving on the brand would have been enough on anyone’s plate.
However, the resort was faced with a downturned economy that hit the outdoor-recreation and tourism markets hard following the infamous events of Sept. 11, 2001. The introduction of houses on the property to be constructed as vacation homes and possibly double as time shares or rental properties came shortly before the housing market tanked. It was as if all those years of blood, sweat, tears and dreams were being pulled from the Lindseys’ grasp.
More recently, Billy and his family and friends have been struggling with his diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis. The disease, according to information published by the Mayo Clinic, involves lung tissue that becomes damaged and scarred.
“This thickened, stiff tissue makes it more difficult for your lungs to work properly. As pulmonary fibrosis worsens, you become progressively more short of breath,” the clinic’s material states.
This put Billy in a place with which he was unfamiliar. He had long been one of the go-getters at the resort, spending time in the office meeting guests, working to keep the grounds clean and mowed, answering calls for room service when a gas fireplace would not light. Suddenly and progressively, he was unable to do what he had done for nearly half a century.
His name was added to a lung-transplant list, and although some treatments he’s received have made the condition more manageable and reinvigorated his health, he still could need a transplant if the damage to his lungs increases.
A dark cloud
While Billy and the rest of the Lindsey’s family are awaiting the celebrations that would come with the resort hitting the big 5-0, there is some doubt that the Lindsey’s Resort name will live on that long.
Earlier this year, all of the Lindseys and many of the staff and friends were at the Cleburne County Courthouse in Heber Springs. They were in attendance one morning to hear from a judge whether or not the resort would be seized by Centennial Bank through foreclosure proceedings.
Billy explained that his family had long had a banking relationship with the Fowler family, who started and owned the majority of Jonesboro-based Liberty Bank. When the bank was sold to another financial institution, he said, communications became strained.
For that, Billy said, he does not blame the new bank. Instead, he said, “It has been a difficult time for many businesses and especially hard hit during the last six-plus years have been small family operations like ours. We have seen our revenues decline during that period to a level about 30 percent below where we were before the recession.”
Believing three years ago that outdoor-recreation and tourism industry pundits were correct, the Lindseys took a “very aggressive growth and improvement plan” to Liberty Bank. “It was a big gamble,” he added, but one that was founded on knowing what the Lindsey’s Resort track record was.
A Christmas-night snowstorm then dropped 15 or more inches on the resort and coupled with 50- to 60-mph winds to sink all of the boats and collapse the dock roof. It was at about this same time that Billy’s symptoms placed him on a double-lung-transplant list.
So the Lindseys have taken several measures to decrease expenditures and try to cover their bills. It may not have been enough, though.
As of press time, the Lindseys, their staff and their guests must await another milestone moment in the resort’s near-50-year history. An investor stepped forward at the courthouse that morning to make a financial offer that could keep the foreclosure from occurring. This man is a longtime friend of the family and a resort regular who had booked a trip that had to be canceled because of the court proceedings.
So what lies ahead for the Lindseys, the resort and the people that call this place home — whether temporarily on pilgrimages to the Little Red or permanently as guides or staff members?
“Although we do have an offer on the table to avoid foreclosure happening, there is no guarantee at this point that [the bank is] going to accept it,” Billy said. “If it works, then we move forward, and if not, we regroup as a family and move to the next chapter of our lives. It is really in God’s hands, and as long as we can hold on to that idea, we will be OK.”
Continuing to wonder about the obvious what-if, he said, “I am very blessed to have had the opportunity to grow up here and live my dream for these past 50 years, to raise my family here and now see my grandchildren have the opportunity to experience what has formed so much of what our family is and why. It has been one hell of a ride, regardless of what happens now. I am grateful for the opportunity that my parents gave me here and for all of the countless and loyal staff, guides and guests who have become a part of our extended family.”
Should the agreement be worked out, though, Billy promised there would be “lots of activities planned to celebrate our 50th year.”
An outdoorsman’s goodbyes
The wader-wearing, rod-and-reel-carrying lot tends to tell time by the seasons that are open or the fish that are spawning instead of the calendar or a watch, unless of course, we’re trying to determine if it’s OK to start shooting. For outdoorsmen, many times we hate to face involved goodbyes.
Some of those goodbyes are annually observed — the last sunset of a duck season, the final time putting a lock on the door of a cook shack at deer camp, the dog days of summer that tend to quash some of our better fishing days.
Others are moments that are more poignant — the death of a decades-older fisherman or hunter who offered so much knowledge, the drained and lifeless mucky bottom of a favorite lake, the last veterinarian trip with that trustworthy hunting companion, the loss of fields and timber hunted since childhood.
No doubt, many outdoorsmen will include saying goodbye to Lindsey’s Resort on their list — should an agreement not be reached. The resort and family name have become synonymous with the outdoor tourism industry of Arkansas.
However, as Billy said, “We’ll turn the page and move forward with jobs to make a living for our families if we can’t work it out. And to all of our customers, guides, staff and family, we thank you for all the years and your friendship.”
Staff writer James K. Joslin can be reached at (501) 399-3693 or jjoslin@arkansasonline.com.