Cash’s family settled in the Dyess colony in Arkansas when he was three years old. In March 1935, Ray and Carrie Cash moved their family from Kingsland to Farm No. 266 in Mississippi County, part of a New Deal resettlement project.
Dyess Colony was created during the Great Depression to help poor families farm land they might eventually own. The project covered about 16,000 acres and was intended to support roughly 500 families. Cotton farming shaped daily life there, and the Cash family’s experiences with hard labor, poverty, and flooding later influenced songs such as “Pickin’ Time” and “Five Feet High and Rising.”
The family remained in Dyess until Cash finished high school in 1950. The original Cash home survives as the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, now a historic site and museum operated by Arkansas State University. A common mix-up is confusing Dyess with Kingsland, where Cash was born, or with Memphis, where his recording career began.