Johnny Cash's Childhood Home At Historic Dyess Colony Open To Public

In this photo taken Friday, Aug. 8, 2014, rain clouds gather over the
childhood home, dating to the mid 1930s, of singer Johnny Cash in Dyess, Ark.
Photo: Danny Johnston, AP

Money and memorabilia from Johnny Cash’s family and friends have helped historians restore a significant part of the Historic Dyess Colony, a government collective built to pull Depression-era families out of poverty. Cash’s boyhood home, along with the colony’s former headquarters, will open Saturday to reflect everyday life in a northeast Arkansas community built on once-sunken land.

The Colony was a 1930s Works Progress Administration experiment. The federal government brought in 487 families and gave them land and a mule.

"This was a practice in socialism," said Roscoe Phillips, who was born at Dyess 77 years ago. "They took people who had nothing and gave us something. It wouldn't happen today."

More: SFGate