The restored boyhood home of country singer Johnny Cash in Dyess.
President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal put millions of Americans to work through infrastructure and agricultural programs during the Great Depression.
Who knew it would also produce an icon of American Music?
If your event takes you to northeast Arkansas, use your down time to visit the Historic Dyess Colony: Johnny Cash Boyhood Home.
Called “Colonization Project No 1’ the project brought an initial group of 13 small subsistence farm families to 16,000 acres of Mississippi County land in 1934. Named for founder William Reynolds Dyess, the colony had a town center with the farms stretching out from the hub.
Ray and Carrie Cash were among hundreds of families recruited from Arkansas and moved with their children to the colony in 1935. Johnny Cash lived there until graduating high school in 1950, and his experiences in the colony influenced a number of his songs, including “Pickin’ Time” and “Five Feet High and Rising.”
Exhibits in the restored Administration Building explain the Dyess Colony and commemorate the Cash family and Dyess’ influence on Johnny Cash and his music. In 2011, Arkansas State University acquired the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, restored through proceeds from an annual Johnny Cash Music Festival.
The Dyess Colony Visitors Center, located in the Colony Circle at the former site of the theatre and pop shop, includes a gift shop, orientation video and exhibits. A shuttle takes visitors from the Colony Circle less than two miles to the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, which is furnished in the authentic style of the era as it was when the Cash family lived there.
Call (870) 764-CASH (2274) or visit dyesscash.astate.edu.
Sign up for Daily E-news
