Lake View Agricultural Resettlement Colony

The town of Lake View was created as a program of the Resettlement Authority under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program in response to the Great Depression.  Lake View was an early resettlement colony specifically for African American farm families during the Depression.  It was a counterpart to the Dyess Colony in Mississippi County, as well as other several small colonies that were set up for white farm families. The purpose of the resettlement program was to give farm tenant families and even small farm owners who had lost their land a chance to get back on their feet and to earn an income sufficient for a decent standard of living.  Very little evidence of the New Deal-era resettlement exists today.