Still Ryding high — on old Heber ranch

HEBER CITY — Tony Burns is best known for turning Ryder Trucks into the largest privately owned non-government truck fleet in the world.

Now, for an encore, he's turning a Heber Valley ranch into a golf course.

"I've been around trucks all my life," says the Dixie College/BYU-educated son of a Mesquite, Nev., truck-stop owner. "This is my first time working with dirt."

As a backdrop to this statement, the 64-year-old Burns, who retired as Ryder's celebrated CEO five years ago after nearly a quarter century at the helm, has chosen an outcropping of red-rock ledges on the east bench of Heber City — the centerpiece and signature formation in a 1,900-acre development known as Red Ledges.

For five generations, the land in and around Red Ledges was convenient, close-to-town ranch property, barely a short gallop from Main Street.

Within two years, it will be the gated home to 1,200 residential building lots, an equestrian center, a Cliff Drysdale tennis academy, a Jim McLean golf school, a clubhouse, spa, hiking and biking trails and 27 holes of Jack Nicklaus-designed golf.

Knock on dirt.

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For a development as large and upscale — and urban — as Red Ledges, Burns has hardly rolled into rural Heber Valley like some out-of-town millionaire in a BMW.

He might be a millionaire, and he might drive a BMW, and he might be from out of town. But he has local connections.

His sister-in-law, Phyllis Jordan Christensen, runs the Heber bowling alley, and his wife, Joyce, used to be Joyce Jordan, who was born and reared on a horse in Heber and would, to this day, rather be here than anywhere else.

It was because of Joyce's love for the valley that Tony bought 400 acres near the red-rock ledges 30 years ago. (He couldn't buy Joyce's old family ranch because it now sits at the bottom of the aptly named Jordanelle Reservoir.)

And it was because of Joyce's sister Phyliss that he recently added the 1,100 acres that include the actual red-rock ledges.

Phyliss' in-laws, the Christensens, had held the ranchland for five generations. When they finally decided to sell, they told Tony and Joyce they'd sell to them providing they matched the high bidder.

They did, and they did.