Thorncrown Chapel

Thorncrown Chapel began with Jim and Dell Reed. Jim Reed, a native of Pine Bluff, bought the land in 1971 to build a retirement home, and he decided to put up a small chapel where travelers could rest and meditate, because so many people admired the view. The architect was E. Fay Jones, who called his regional variation on Frank Lloyd Wright's organic style the Ozark style. Jones and his wife Gus chose the name by pairing words from two lists, and picked thorn and crown as the most poetic. The chapel opened on July 10, 1980.

The main room is 24 feet wide, 60 feet long and 48 feet high, under a simple gable roof with a skylight along the ridge. Eighteen wood columns line each long side, and a latticework of light wooden pieces ties them together overhead and braces the walls from inside, which the Encyclopedia of Arkansas calls the building's most important visual feature. Native stone, pine and glass are the materials. The chapel's site counts 425 windows and a foundation of more than 100 tons of native stone. The American Institute of Architects ranked it fourth among the best buildings of the twentieth century and gave it the 2006 Twenty-five Year Award. It was listed on the National Register on April 28, 2000.

The chapel is at 12968 Highway 62 West, about 1.5 miles west of Eureka Springs, and GPS often shows the wrong spot. It is open March through December, and Sunday services are held from April through October at 9 and 11 a.m.