DYESS COLONY - BOYHOOD HOME OF JOHNNY CASH

New Deal Relocation Colony 1930s

Back during the Depression, many farmers lost their homes and had nothing. Dyess Colony was established in 1934 under the Works Progress Administration by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Resettlement Colony No. 1 consisted of 16,000 acres. Men were hired off the relief rolls to make something of the snake-infested area.

It was a second chance for 500 families stricken by the Great Depression.

Families were selected on the basis of need, farming knowledge, and physical fitness. These pioneers cleared land for farms with the government-subsidized help of 20-40 acres and a mule. These families were expected to pay back the federal government in two years.

Fertile Swamp Bottomlands Were Cleared

The area in northeast Arkansas that included Dyess were known as the "Sunk Lands" after the New Madrid earthquakes. A series of shocks between December 1811 and February 1812 dropped vast amounts of land as much as 50 feet into the earth.

Small Two Bedroom Home on Site 266

The government built farm houses, chicken coops and smoke houses and expected the colonists to do the back breaking work of clearing the remainder of each tract, convert it to agricultural production, and ultimately purchase their farmsteads on reasonable terms. They cut down trees and blasted stumps to farm cotton, corn and soybeans along with maintaining a pasture for livestock.

Mama's Pantry

A town center was also created with federal offices and support services for the colony, including a community center, schools, hospital cannery, cotton gin, co-op store, cafe and other services. Colonists took their produce to the Dyess cannery where the cannery kept a portion of the canned fruit in exchange for processing the rest for the family.

The boyhood home is furnished based on recollections from family members.

Mother's Original Piano in the Front Parlor

The Cash home in Dyess, AR was built in 1935 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was neat to stand in the hall and look into the bedroom where the American legend slept and hoped for better times.

Ray Cash and his wife, Carrie Rivers Cash, moved to Dyess, AR in 1936. They had seven children: Roy, Margaret Louise, Jack, J. R., Reba, Joanne, and Tommy.

J.R. started working in cotton fields at age five, singing along with his family while working.  The family farm was flooded twice, which led him to later write the song "Five Feet High and Rising." Johnny Cash was inspired by economic and personal struggles of his own family and other people facing similar hardships.  He had sympathy for the poor and working class.  

Original Linoleum "Carpet"

 J. R. Cash lived here from the age of three until he graduated high school as Class Vice-President in 1950.

At birth, Cash was named J. R. Cash.  When he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950, he was not permitted to use initials as a first name, so he changed his name to John R. Cash. It wasn't until 1955 when signing with Sun Records that he started going by Johnny Cash.

After basic training and technical training in San Antonio, TX, he was assigned as a Morse code operator intercepting Soviet Army transmission in Landsberg, Germany. He was considered a "spy" and was really good at it.

Johnny Cash was married twice, once to Vivian Liberto, with whom he had four daughters. And later to June Carter with whom he had a son, John Carter Cash.

Johnny and June continued to work, raise their son, create music and tour together for 35 years.

Administration Building in Dyess, AR

Arkansas State University is working to preserve the heritage of the Dyess Colony by restoring significant buildings that remain from its days as an agricultural resettlement community. The first phase of this plan involved restoring the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home and the Administration Building in the Colony Center and stabilizing what remained of the former theater. 

Phase Two included re-creating the former theater and adjacent pop shop for use as a Visitors Center and installing historic signage at locations of previous colony buildings, such as the school, hospital, cannery, cotton gin, and community building.