Heber Springs is a city in and the county seat of Cleburne County, Arkansas. When the earliest settlers arrived in the area now known as Heber Springs in the 1830s, they were attracted to scenic Sugar Loaf Mountain to the east and the mineral springs that bubbled out of the ground in the valley nearby (Berry, 2018). Heber Springs was founded by Max Frauenthal. In 1881, Frauenthal bought land in Van Buren County that included that part of the present town of Heber Springs on which Spring Park, with its seven mineral springs is located. Frauenthal founded the Sugar Loaf Springs Company and plotted a town site which was incorporated as Sugar Loaf on October 4, 1882. In 1883, Frauenthal donated land for the courthouse square, built a frame courthouse to be used by the soon to be created Cleburne County, and donated the land for Spring Park, thus securing the county seat for the new town. Frauenthal chose the name Cleburne County to honor Confederate General Patrick Cleburne, who was killed in the Battle of Franklin in 1864. In 1910, Sugar Loaf’s name was changed to Heber Springs in order to avoid confusion with another town with a post office named Sugar Loaf. Frauenthal chose the new name to honor John T. Jones’s son, Dr. Heber Jones, a prominent physician in Memphis, Tennessee (Wikipedia, 2019).
Citations
Berry, Evalena. (2018, Jul. 18). Heber Springs (Cleburne County). Retrieved from encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
Wikipedia. (2019, Sep. 1). Heber Springs, Arkansas. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org.
How it all Began 