Town hopes to cash in with museum devoted to Man in Black
Posted on Monday, December 1, 2008
DYESS — Mayor Larry Sims admits that his hardscrabble town has seen better days.
Dyess’ population is down to 515 residents from a high of 2, 500. The only business left is a general store and tire-repair shop. Abandoned and collapsing houses litter its main street.
One thing differentiates this Mississippi County town from dozens of other dying Delta hamlets just like it: Dyess was the boyhood home of countrymusic legend Johnny Cash.
Every year, tourists from across the globe make the pilgrimage to Dyess to pay homage to the Man in Black. They come even though there’s nothing Cash-related to do in Dyess other than drive by his old country home.
City leaders aim to change that by opening an $ 800, 000 museum devoted to Cash and his hometown. They’d use one of the few remaining buildings from the time of the deceased star’s Dyess youth. The museum would be just about the only chance the town has of spurring economic development, the mayor said.
“Times have changed for the worst the last few years. Like most towns, it’s hard to hold on,” Sims said. “This would put Dyess back on the map. It would help everything.”
Mississippi Colonization Project No. 1, or what later became Dyess, was launched in 1934, as Arkansas reeled from the Great Depression.
Everett Henson, a Dyess historian who grew up in town, said the federal government created Dyess as a resettlement colony for destitute Arkansas farmers.
W. R. Dyess, head of Arkansas ’ Works Progress Administration program, laid out the colony on 16, 000 acres of uncleared forest off the banks of the Tyronza River.
The land was swampy but fertile enough to support crops.
About 500 families from across Arkansas were selected to join the colony, Henson said.
Participants had to be poor, from a farming background, of high moral character and white.
The government gave each family 20-40 acres with a house and a barn, a chicken coop, a smokehouse, a mule, a cow, food and seed.
In exchange, the families had to clear the land and farm it. Over time, they’d use the proceeds from their crops — cotton was king at the time — to repay the government.
GROWING UP WITH CASH Dyess was once a bustling place. It had a cotton gin, a canning factory, a hospital, a school, a service station, a movie theater, a newspaper and a roller rink. The Henson family moved to Dyess from Egypt in Craighead County with the first 500 families to settle there. The comparative wealth the family found in Dyess seemed unreal at the time, said Henson’s younger brother, A. J. Henson. In Egypt, the family farmed to survive. Family members were so poor that they couldn’t afford windowpanes and stuffed bags of cotton in their home’s sills for insulation.
“This place was unbelievable to us,” A. J. Henson said. “We had never seen anything this nice.”
A young Cash and his family moved to Dyess from Kingsland in Cleveland County in 1935, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.
Their five-room home made of wooden planks still stands about 3 miles east of the center of town, down a gravel road.
A. J. Henson, the young Cash and another boy named J. E. Huff became fast friends during their youth in Dyess.
When they weren’t picking cotton, the trio spent days swimming in the Tyronza River, watching 15-cent movies at the theater and driving a tractor 10 miles to Lepanto in Poinsett County to shoot pool. Back then, Cash, who went by “J. R.,” was just one of the guys, Huff said. He enjoyed getting into mischief, smoking cigarettes and chasing girls. “He was just like us. He was down to earth. He was J. R. Cash,” Huff said. “And he was still J. R. Cash every time I saw him later.” Cash graduated vice president of Dyess High School’s Class of 1950 and promptly enlisted in the U. S. Air Force. By 1955, he recorded his first album and was on his way to musical stardom.
MONEY TO WORK WITH The colony’s original administration building marks the center of town.
Seventy years ago, the circular road in front of the building always was jammed with people, mules and wagons, A. J. Henson said.
Today, the building sits vacant.
Residents started leaving Dyess during World War II and haven’t stopped since, Sims said.
Dyess’ school, hospital and cotton gin — nearly everything linking the town to its past prosperity — are gone.
Besides a few farmhouses, the administration building is the only original structure standing.
The city bought the 5, 800-square-foot building for $ 40, 000 when it went up for sale three years ago.
City leaders hope to raise $ 800, 000 to renovate and convert it into a museum celebrating Cash’s legacy and Dyess ’ history.
So far, the city has raised about $ 90, 000 — half from a grant and the rest from a donation by former Dyess resident Gene Williams, Cash’s former manager who is now a musician in Branson.
Dyess will have to raise the remaining $ 700, 000 or so through fundraising and grants, Sims said. The city’s annual Johnny Cash memorial concert, launched in 2006, has yet to raise significant money for the renovation project, Sims said. The city already has replaced the roof, Sims said, but the interior needs to be gutted. The floor is collapsing in places, plumbing fixtures are ripped out of the wall, and dirt and garbage cover the floor. It will take a lot of work, but opening the museum is the only hope Dyess has for an economic turnaround, Sims said.
FANS FLOAT IN Even without any amenities or attractions, tourists still trek to Dyess. About 300 Cash fans have signed a visitors book kept at City Hall since 2006. They’ve visited from all over the world: Canada, England, Holland, Denmark, Australia and Finland, even Laos. “And this is all with no advertising,” Sims said. “Just think if we had more to see.”
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