RESTORATION Kathleen Whyman, managing editor, Attractions Management
The house was lifted from its site so the soil could be replaced to prevent future damage
HOME IMPROVEMENT
What is the Historic Dyess Colony: Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash project? We’re preserving the home of Johnny Cash and putting it in a much larger social context of the New Deal era of the 1930s and a federal government social experiment to get out of work farmers back on their feet. It’s not just a shrine to Johnny Cash,
it’s the story of what life within the Dyess colony was about and how the Cash family went from being an out of work farm family to making a living and eventually owning their own land.
How is this being done? The project is a partnership between Arkansas State University, The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the City of Dyess to revitalise the town by focusing on heritage tourism opportu- nities. It includes restoration of several historical buildings in the town centre, or colony, as well as the Johnny Cash boyhood home. The Dyess Colony was an agricul-
tural resettlement community during the New Deal era in the 1930s. It was one of President Roosevelt’s projects to get out-of-work farmers back on their feet. The government acquired 16,000
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Music legend Johnny Cash’s boyhood home has been restored to tell the story of life in The New Deal era. Dr Ruth Hawkins reveals how the project aims to revitalise the area once again
acres of land and divided it into 20- and 40-acre farmsteads. They recruited 500 colonist families, who were out of work and on welfare, to come and live and work on this land and eventually acquire the land by paying back the government from their crop proceeds. Johnny Cash’s parents, Ray and Carrie, were among the colonist families that were recruited. They came here when Johnny was three-years-old. The site originally included a colony
centre, with a two-storey administra- tion building for all the federal offices, a community centre, which later burned down, a theatre and a Co-op store.
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The administration building still exists, which we at Arkansas State University own and are restoring. The cinema was built in 1947 and has deteriorated except for the front façade. We’re prop- ping it up and will rebuild it, keeping the historic façade and restoring it. The Co-op store also burned down and eventually we’d like to rebuild that too. As director of Arkansas Heritage
Sites, I’m the overall project director. I supervise the students that work on the project and work with the contractors and the people doing the restoration.
What was the inspiration? Many people have been interested for a long time in the fact that Johnny Cash came from this small town – it has less than 500 people living here. We were inspired by the fact that even though there’s nothing to do here, people con- stantly drive by this property to look at it. We know, from messages they’ve left, that they come from all over the world. But when people drove by, they saw a dilapidated, sagging house. We didn’t want them to come away with the impression that he lived in that condi- tion because he didn’t – he lived in a brand new house that had just been built by the government. For years we’ve
AM 2 2013 ©Cybertrek 2013
Photo: ElizabEth WiEdoWEr
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