Johnny Cash Boyhood Home

Visit the five-room boyhood home of Johnny Cash in Dyess, Arkansas.

Johnny Cash's parents experienced financial hardship and lost their farm in 1934. With the help of the federal agricultural resettlement program, they, along with hundreds of other families, were chosen based on need, farming knowledge, and physical fitness to get land and a new home. Each of the 500 families received 40 acres and a mule to clear the land and farm it. The Cash farm was No. 266, and the tiny new home had just five rooms, including two bedrooms. Johnny Cash was two when his family moved here. He lived in the house for the next 15 years, helping in the surrounding fields and picking the cotton.

Johnny Cash learned to sing and wrote two of his famous songs in his small shared bedroom. The songs are "Five Feet High and Rising," describing flooding on the property, and "Picking Time." After the Cash family left the property and moved to town, the house was empty. In 2011, Arkansas State University bought the property and began renovations. The linoleum had been covered by carpet, protecting it so well that they preserved the original flooring. Pieces of the Cash family furniture, including their piano, are also inside the home. This museum opened in 2014, and the house has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2018. If you love country music, come and be inspired by visiting Johnny Cash's Boyhood home.