Euine Fay Jones, noted American architect and designer, was born in Pine Bluff, Jefferson County, Arkansas, on January 31, 1921. He enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1938.At the outbreak of World War II Jones joined the United States Navy and served in the Pacific theater of operations as a naval aviator piloting torpedo and dive bombers. Jones married Mary Elizabeth "Gus" Knox on January 6, 1943.

After the war Jones studied at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas and at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he encountered and began studying under Frank Lloyd Wright. Jones established a private practice in the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas, where he also joined the faculty of department of architecture at the University of Arkansas, later serving as the first dean of the UA School of Architecture. Jones used Frank Lloyd Wright's principles to create buildings that had a distinct, natural flair . Among his most famous buildings are the Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Carroll County, Arkansas, the Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel in Bella Vista, Benton County, Arkansas, and the Pinecote Pavilion at the Crosby Arboretum in Picayune, Mississippi. Jones is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and, in 1990, was the recipient of its highest honor, the A.I.A. Gold Medal. He died on August 31, 2004, at his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

In 1988, the American Institute of Architects commissioned Robert Adams Ivy Jr., editor-in-chief of Architectural Record and an architect himself, to produce a monograph on the architecture of E. Fay Jones. Ivy subsequently wrote Fay Jones: The Architecture of E. Fay Jones, which was published by A.I.A. Press in 1992.