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  • Aberdeen Gardens - Hampton VA
    Originally named Newport News Homesteads, "Aberdeen Gardens was a New Deal planned community initiated by Hampton Institue (now Hampton University), designed specifically for the resettlement of African-American workers in Newport News and Hampton. In 1934, the Hampton Institute secured a $245,000 federal grant to create the housing development. It was the only Resettlement Administration community for blacks in Virginia and only the second neighborhood in the nation for blacks financed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Subsistence Homestead Project. The Aberdeen neighborhood was designed by Hillyard R. Robertson, a black architect from Howard University. It became a model resettlement community in the United States. Charles Duke, a black architect, was name architect-in-charge...
  • Ashwood Resettlement Community - Ashwood SC
    "The Ashwood community was created by the New Deal resettlement program to convert defunct plantation or farm land into a self-sustaining community of independent farms with educational, agricultural, and commercial support facilities."
  • Babbin Farm - Caribou ME
    The Babbin Farm is an example of the work of the Resettlement Administration in getting families off the relief rolls and back to farming. An article in the July 1 1937 Bangor Daily News reports on two families, the Babbins and Holmquists who were helped. The article mentions that a million farm families were on the relief rolls as the depression came on. “It was during this crisis that the government came to the conclusion that in most cases a more ideal and beneficial situation exists when the farmer is helped to help himself himself than by parceling out of direct...
  • Cahaba Homestead Village - Trussville AL
    "Cahaba Homestead Village (usually Cahaba Village, listed as the Cahaba Homestead Village Historic District). is a planned residential development located on the banks of the Cahaba River north of downtown Trussville (map). It was constructed between 1936 and 1938 by the Resettlement Administration on the site of the original Trussville Furnace. Originally called "Slagheap Village" because of the large slag piles covering the site, Cahaba Village became a distinct and active community during World War II. It was incorporated, along with "Old Trussville" into the City of Trussville in 1947... The design was approved in 1936 and constructed over the following...
  • Cahaba Village - Trussville AL
    Originally known as Slagheap, "Cahaba Homestead Village (usually Cahaba Village, listed as the Cahaba Homestead Village Historic District), is a planned residential development located on the banks of the Cahaba River north of downtown Trussville (map). It was constructed between 1936 and 1938 by the Resettlement Administration on the site of the original Trussville Furnace. Originally called "Slagheap Village" because of the large slag piles covering the site, Cahaba Village became a distinct and active community during World War II. It was incorporated, along with "Old Trussville" into the City of Trussville in 1947."   (wikipedia)
  • Campbell House - Palmer AK
    This 1935 Colony House was built as part of the New Deal resettlement program that brought colonists from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin to Palmer Alaska in 1935. The building has recently been restored and accepted to the National Register of Historic Places. It is also the recent Recipient of the 2013 Alaska Association for Historic Preservation Award of Excellence.
  • Cedars of Lebanon State Park - Lebanon TN
    The creation of the Cedars of Lebanon State Park in Tennessee was a multifaceted joint project of the Resettlement Administration, the CCC, the forestry division, NPS and the WPA: "Project development began in the fall of 1935, with forestry personnel, along with RA and CCC workers, planting new seedlings of juniper cedar, black walnut, black locust, ash, yellow poplar, and mulberry trees. The crews introduced erosion controls and built roads and trails... The WPA constructed recreational facilities, including picnic areas, overlook shelters on the Jackson Cave Trail, and the original park lodge. Lebanon Cedar Forest was officially opened in September 1937...
  • Cherry Lake Farms - Madison FL
    "Cherry Lake Farm (also known as Cherry Rural Rehabilitation Project) was a New Deal rural relief program initiated by the FERA and the Resettlement Administration (RA) and implemented by the WPA. The project involved moving 500 needy families from Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville onto a 15,000-acre communal tract. The workers formed the cooperatively-owned Cherry Lake Farms (headquartered in the 1839 former plantation home, the Hinton House) and constructed a school, an auditorium, a coop store, barracks, a lumber yard, and a mill. Families lived in 170 cottages with phones, electricity, and running water?all furnished by jointly-owned utilities."   (www.floridamemory.com) According to the...
  • City of Arthurdale - Arthurdale WV
    "Arthurdale was the first of many New Deal planned communities established under Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. It was intended to take impoverished laborers, farmers, and coal miners and move them to a modern rural community that would allow them to become economically self-sufficient... Mrs. Roosevelt was so passionate about the concept that she brought it to the attention of her husband, who decided to place the project under the direction of the United States Department of the Interior. Construction began at the end of 1933 and from the outset it was clear that the Arthurdale community had become one of Eleanor Roosevelt’s...
  • Cumberland Homesteads - Crossville TN
    "Cumberland Homesteads is a community located in Cumberland County, Tennessee, United States. Established by the New Deal-era Division of Subsistence Homesteads in 1934, the community was envisioned by federal planners as a model of cooperative living for the region's distressed farmers, coal miners, and factory workers. While the cooperative experiment failed and the federal government withdrew from the project in the 1940s, the Homesteads community nevertheless survived. In 1988, several hundred of the community's original houses and other buildings, which are characterized by the native "crab orchard" sandstone used in their construction, were added to the National Register of Historic...
  • Cumberland Mountain State Park - Crossville TN
    "Cumberland Mountain State Park is a state park in Cumberland County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The park consists of 1,720 acres (7.0 km2) situated around Byrd Lake, a man-made lake created by the impoundment of Byrd Creek in the 1930s. The park is set amidst an environmental microcosm of the Cumberland Plateau and provides numerous recreational activities, including an 18-hole Bear Trace golf course. Cumberland Mountain State Park began as part of the greater Cumberland Homesteads Project, a New Deal-era initiative by the Resettlement Administration that helped relocate poverty-stricken families on the Cumberland Plateau to small farms centered around what...
  • Dalworthington Gardens - Dalworthington Gardens TX
    Dalworthington Gardens (named that for its proximity to Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington) was established in 1934 as a subsistence homestead project by the Resettlement Administration: "In early 1934, the federal government allotted $250,000 to buy 593.3 acres of land south of Arkansas Lane near Arlington, Texas.  It would contain 80 sites for development (U.S. Plat and Dedication).  In June of that year, Civil Works Administration workers arrived to remove all fences and clear out the woods except in the extreme south end of the project.  On July 13, a local contractor, F.A. Mote was awarded the contract to build the...
  • Deshee Farms Barn - Johnson IN
    This barn was given new siding and doors, a concrete foundation, and a concrete and wood wall by the Resettlement Administration (RA), between 1937 and 1938.
  • Deshee Farms Structures - Johnson IN
    There are a variety of structures on this property. All were constructed by the Resettlement Administration (RA) between 1937 and 1938. There is a home with aluminum siding and a side porch (moved from Deshee Farms in 1945), a rear shed, and an attached garage.
  • Garment Factory (former) - Roosevelt NJ
    "Five hundred acres of the 1,200 acre tract were to be used for farming, and the remaining portion for 200 houses on 1/2 acre plots, a community school, a factory building, a poultry yard and modern water and sewer plants. ...terms were reached with the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union when it was agreed that the Jersey Homesteads factory would be a new cooperative run by the settlers themselves, so would remove no union jobs from New York. Jersey Homesteads was set up as a triple cooperative, comprised of a farm, retail stores and a factory. The farm, consisting of general, poultry...
  • Hattiesburg Homesteads - Hattiesburg MS
    The Hattiesburg Homesteads was one of five "industrial communities" established in Mississippi as part of the Resettlement Administration, and was the smallest project in the state. Twenty four frame clapboard units were built at a cost of $3,152 per unit. Industrial communities were "...established for industrial workers and located in the outskirts of cities and large towns..." (Smith, p. 89).
  • Historic Dyess Colony - Dyess AR
    "Originally known as “Colonization Project Number 1,” Dyess Colony was first controlled by the Arkansas Rural Rehabilitation Corporation.  This corporation was set up by the Rural Rehabilitation Program of the Emergency Relief Administration in Arkansas.  In 1936 the Resettlement Administration took over management of the Arkansas Rural Rehabilitation Corporation.  The legal structure of the colony was revised, and Dyess Colony Corporation was organized.  When the Farm Security Administration was established in 1937, it became the third agency to administer Dyess. Dyess Colony was an experiment in permanent reestablishment of the independent farmer.  Intended as a pioneer effort, the colony was, in...
  • Holliday Lake State Park - Appomattox VA
    The area encompassing Holliday Lake State Park and the surrounding state forest was cleared in the 1800s for farmland. In the 1930s, the federal government, through the Resettlement Administration, began buying the farms to return the land to its former productive hardwood forest status. Construction of a dam was begun at Fish Pond Creek; however efforts were relocated to Holliday Creek where a lake could be developed. The park was established in 1939 and acquired in by the state of Virginia 1945. Holliday Lake State Park, formerly Holliday Lake Recreational Area, was renamed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation...
  • Horral House (Chester Eisenhut House) - Decker IN
    This structure was built by the Resettlement Agency (RA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA) between 1937 and 1938. Its style is typical of early 20th century house
  • House - Johnson IN
    This private house has a concrete foundation, and asphalt and wood walls, constructed through the Resettlement Administration (RA) between 1937 and 1938.
  • Lake Dick Resettlement Community - Altheimer AR
    Lake Dick was a Resettlement project, part of the efforts to help sharecroppers establish their own farms. The Resettlement Administration purchased 3, 453 acres, built "80 houses, six community buildings, and several farm support structures" for a cooperative farm (Arkansas Historic Preservation Program). Eighty white farm families, who had been either sharecroppers or tenant farmers, from 29 Arkansas counties were selected by the Farm Security Administration to take part in the cooperative. The cooperative was designed for each farmer to have his house, with a small plot of land for vegetables, but the remaining acreage was to be farmed jointly. In...
  • Matanuska Colony Community Center (Palmer Historic District) - Palmer AK
    What is now the Palmer Alaska Historic District was founded in 1935 as the Matanuska Colony Project. It was one of 100 New Deal resettlement programs and involved major efforts by FERA and the Resettlement Administration. The town site of Palmer expanded rapidly with the relocation of 203 colonists from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin in 1935 under the Relocation project.  Prior to that the area was composed of homesteads primarily. The Palmer Historical Society has a Colony House Museum that is a 'house' as it would have been in 1935-1945.  It is an original colony house moved into the historic...
  • Migrant Farmworker Housing - Farmersville CA
    The New Deal's Resettlement Administration (RA) built permanent housing units for migrant farm workers in Farmersville CA in 1938.  The exact location is unknown.  It is unlikely that these buildings survive.
  • Natchez Trace State Park - Wildersville TN
    This Tennessee state park was developed by several New Deal  "on land bought from residents who could no longer farm the land due to erosion." (wikipedia.org) "Three New Deal agencies, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and the Resettlement Administration, assumed responsibility for the park's initial planning and development. Like other early state parks, the Resettlement Administration relocated property owners from unproductive and overused farm land; the CCC and WPA began land replenishment and park construction. The CCC concentrated its efforts on reforestation work and instigated land stabilization programs that included the introduction of the Japanese vine...
  • Old Greenbelt Planned Community - Greenbelt MD
    The heart of today's Greenbelt, Maryland – popularly known as "Old Greenbelt" – is a large, planned community laid out and constructed during the New Deal. It features community facilities such as a school, theater and community center, a large number and variety of housing, basic infrastructure of roads, water and sewers, and extensive landscaping and an attached forest.  Almost all of the original facilities are still intact. Greenbelt was one of four greenbelt towns initiated by Rex Tugwell, head of the Resettlement Administration (RA). Greendale, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, and Greenhills, Ohio, near Cincinnati, are other surviving greenbelt towns; a fourth,...
  • Osage Farms - Pettis Co. MO
    The Resettlement Administration constructed the Osage Farms cooperative project across 13 miles in the northern part of Pettis County, Missouri from 1937-1943. Many of the original buildings, including a government farmhouse, still remain and are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They are now part of the Bois d'Arc Cooperative farm. The NRHP document about the properties contains the following excerpts: "The Osage Farms project area is within the easternmost four (Houstonia, Hughesville, Heaths Creek and Longwood) of a band of five townships across the northern third of Pettis County... The period of significance is 1937-1943, a timeframe during which...
  • Penderlea Homesteads - Willard NC
    "Penderlea Homestead Farms, located in northwest Pender County, North Carolina, was the first of 152 homestead projects developed in 1934 under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The purpose of the homestead projects was to provide penniless tenant farmers, bankrupt farm owners, and unemployed ex-farmers during the Great Depression with a means of making a living. Providing for self-sufficient rural communities also eased the burden of over-crowded cities. n 1934, Hugh MacRae, prominent Wilmington developer and agriculturist, proposed to the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, U.S. Department of the Interior, that a homestead project be established in Pender County... In May of1935, the Resettlement...
  • Phoenix Homesteads - Phoenix AZ
    "In 1934 the Division of Subsistence Homesteads purchased a tract of land on what was then the outskirts of Phoenix in order to build a public housing community for low-income residents. Construction of the first half of the Phoenix Homesteads began in 1934 and was completed in 1935. These Pueblo Revival style adobe homes were built on 0.75-acre parcels to accommodate subsistence gardens and small farm animals. Fruit, nut, and olive trees added to the self-sufficiency of the community. Trees and shrubs were planted for shade and privacy. A second small-scale farming cooperative was planned in 1935 by the Resettlement...
  • Plum Bayou Resettlement Project - Plum Bayou AR
    Plum Bayou was the first settlement in Arkansas and in the United States (Arkansas Historic Preservation Program). Resettlement Administrator Rexford G. Tugwell, was present at the opening dedication ceremony November 20, 1936. "Tugwell saw the Plum Bayou Project as representative of a new chapter in American agricultural history" (AHPP). Plum Bayou was available to 183 selected families, 30-40 acres per family. In addition to house, barn, and well, the homes were furnished with a refrigerator and had electricity (Hunter). The community added a community center, a school, gym, library, and vocational center. A few of the original settlers were able to...
  • Resettlement Community - Fruita CO
    The farmland around the town of Fruita in western Colorado was the site of a Resettlement Administration (RA) project that relocated poor farmers driven out by the Dust Bowl. Some 34 families had been relocated to Fruita by 1937. The official name was the Grand Valley Resettlement Project (also known as the Western Farms Association). (Fruita Community History page) It appears that another 32 families were relocated to neighboring Loma CO, probably as part of the same Resettlement Project (Wikipedia).  A Community Hall was built in Loma for the new settlers in the area by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in...
  • Resettlement Community Housing - Roosevelt NJ
    "In December 1935, the Resettlement Administration hired Alfred Kastner, a German-born architect and city planner who was known for his designs for low-cost housing, as Principal Architect. Kastner, in turn, hired Louis I. Kahn, then a young architect, as his assistant. In designing the community, Kastner was influenced by both the English Garden City Idea and by the German Bauhaus style. Jersey Homesteads' buildings are characterized by their spare geometric forms and use of modern building materials (including cinder blocks). The houses are integrated with communal areas and surrounded by a green belt. (3) Although it appears rather stark today,...
  • Resettlement Farmsteads - Kearney NE
    The first rehabilitation farm project to be established in Nebraska, and among the first in the country, was established at Kearney. Fifty-seven acres of land were purchased by the Rural Rehabilitation program. The land lay just north of the north line of East Lawn and east of the branch line tracks. Eight homesteads of about seven acres each were established on this track, and work subdividing the land, erecting fencing, homes and other improvements began in the summer of 1934. Under provisions of the act regulating the rehabilitation farmsteads, tenant families assigned to the homesteads would rent the property for...
  • Roosevelt Public School - Roosevelt NJ
    The school was constructed as part of the original Resettlement Administration settlement. Parts of the original school have since been added, but portions of the building are still original. The building houses the town's beloved Ben Shahn mural, as well as a pair of intricate doors designed by Otto Wester in 1938. The doors have been removed from the exterior but are still on display inside the building.
  • Sabine Farms - Marshall TX
    Sabine Farms was one of 200 New Deal Resettlement Administration communities and one of only thirteen set aside for African Americans. "Sabine Farms was built on nearly 12,000 acres of land. 'They built about 80 homes - half in Harrison County and half in Panola County,' explained Ms. Murray. In addition, a 19.3 acre community center was constructed that included a caretaker's house, an auditorium, a home economics building and beauty shop, a farm shop, a health center, the cooperative grocery store and cannery, a dormitory and dining hall, slaughter house, barbecue pit, a well and combination water tower and office building, according...
  • San Luis Valley Farms Resettlement Community (former) - Alamosa CO
    "In the 1930s, the Waverly area once again was to be the site for newcomers seeking a better life. Henry Gestefield, a German immigrant, worked as a Farm Management Specialist for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) Resettlement Division to develop 82 farms for the resettlement of destitute Dust Bowl farmers. Along with Mr. Yoshida, he was integral to the raising and shipping of iceberg lettuce in the San Luis Valley. The town of Waverly was established with support of the FSA Resettlement Project. The Houlton and Russell families were among the first of many families to relocate from eastern Colorado...
  • Silver Falls State Park - Silverton OR
    Although the State's initial acquisition of land for the park occurred in 1931, the early development of Silver Falls State Park can be credited to several of the New Deal programs. A significant portion of the land for the park was purchased by the federal Resettlement Administration (RA) c 1935, and developed for recreational use through the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) between 1935 and 1942. As shown on the map below, a portion of the land that became Silver Falls State Park was once Silver Falls City.  Surrounding this old logging town, the...
  • Silver Falls State Park: Silver Creek Youth Camp (former Silver Creek Recreation Development Area) - Silverton OR
    The early development of Silver Falls State Park can be credited to several of the New Deal programs. A significant portion of the land for the park was purchased by the federal Resettlement Administration (RA) c. 1935, and developed for recreational use through the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) between 1935 and 1942. During that period, a distinction was made between Silver Falls Park, which was accessible to the public, and the area designated as the Silver Creek Recreation Development Area (RDA), which was a special federal program designed to allow urban youth...
  • Singletary Lake State Park - Kelly NC
    "In 1936, through a federally financed work program, the National Park Service bought portions of the land surrounding Singletary Lake for a recreational demonstration project. One of two projects in North Carolina, the federal government purchased the land at an average cost of $4.51 per acre. The land was managed by the Resettlement Administration until 1939, and during this period resettlement workers and local residents constructed Singletary Recreation Center, which included an office, maintenance building and recreation facilities. In addition, using local talents and materials, an infirmary building, ten cabins, a dining and recreation hall, and a workshop—a fully operational group...
  • Standing Stone State Park - Overton TN
    "Standing Stone State Park is a state park in Overton County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The park consists of 855 acres (3.46 km2) along the shoreline of the man-made 69-acre (0.28 km2) Standing Stone Lake. The 11,000-acre (45 km2) Standing Stone State Forest surrounds the park. The park and forest were developed in the 1930s as part of New Deal-era initiatives to relocate impoverished farmers and restore forests to degraded and heavily eroded lands. The park was named after the Standing Stone, a mysterious rock believed to be of Native American origin or importance that once stood along the old Walton Road...
  • Tillery Resettlement Community - Tillery NC
    Construction of Tillery Farms began in 1935 in Halifax County, North Carolina as an experimental farm resettlement that included segregated sections for black and white farmers, possibly the only New Deal-era planned community of its kind. The project was constructed on fertile land along the banks of the Roanoke River, near the small settlement of Tillery. Eventually it grew to consist of more than eighteen-thousand acres, with homes for more than two hundred farm families. Built on land carved out of nearby plantations, it also included a community center, cooperative store, grist mill, potato curing house, and an assortment of...
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