Resettlement Administration

 ( 1935 Establishments In The United States ) 

On January 1, 1937, Records of the Farmers Home Administration with hopes of making the RA more effective, the Resettlement Administration was transferred to the Department of Agriculture through executive order 7530. In the face of Congressional criticism, in September 1937 the Resettlement Administration was folded into a new body, the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which operated until 1946.

• Aksarben Village
• Arthurdale, West Virginia, (first community begun by Subsistence Homesteads and pet project of Eleanor Roosevelt)
• Cahaba Village in Trussville, Alabama (begun by the Works Progress Administration)
• Caney Lakes Recreation Area in Webster Parish, Louisiana
• Christian-Trigg Farms near Hopkinsville, Kentucky (built by the RA and Farm Security Administration)
• Cumberland Homesteads near Crossville, Tennessee (begun by the Division of Subsistence Homesteads)
• Farmstead / Jasper, Alabama, this development, began by the WPA, included 40 homes, churches, a civic center, and a school.
• Greenbelt, Maryland, completely planned and constructed by the RA outside Washington, D.C.
• Greendale, Wisconsin, another new town built by the RA, outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Greenhills, Ohio, the third of the RA's new towns, built outside Cincinnati, Ohio
• Hickory Ridge, Virginia (now Prince William Forest Park)
• Greenbrook, New Jersey (planned by the RA but never built)
• Matanuska Valley Colony, Alaska (near what is now Palmer, Alaska)
• Mileston, Mississippi, one of thirteen resettlement communities that were entirely African-American
• Palmerdale in Pinson, Alabama (parts built by the Works Progress Administration)
• Jersey Homesteads (begun by the Division of Subsistence Homesteads)
• Tillery, North Carolina

The Weedpatch Camp (also known as the Arvin Federal Government Camp and the Sunset Labor Camp), now on the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1936 south of Bakersfield, California — not by the Resettlement Administration but by the Works Progress Administration. The camp inspired John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

• The Photography Project, which documented the rural poverty of the Great Depression and produced thousands of images that are now stored and available at the Library of Congress, was headed up by Roy Stryker.
• The Film Project, which produced two documentaries directed by Pare Lorentz and scored by Virgil Thomson, The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River.
• Sidney Robertson Cowell's recordings of folk songs, conducted during the summer of 1937, sponsored by the RA's Special Skills Division, and now stored at the University of Wisconsin.

• Dust Bowl
• National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933
• Subsistence Homesteads Division

Citations

Sources

• Meriam; Lewis. Relief and Social Security The Brookings Institution. 1946 (analysis and statistical summary of all the New Deal relief programs)

• Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937–1946. Presented by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center and Mills Music Library Special Collections.
• Ohio History Central on Resettlement Administration
• Oklahoma History on Resettlement Administration
• Complete List of New Deal Communities, of the Resettlement Administration, the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, from the National New Deal Preservation Association
• Pine Mountain Valley Resettlement Project historical marker in Pine Mountain, Georgia