Mini Road Trip - Ford Rouge Factory Tour

The Ford Rouge Factory today is where the F-150 trucks are assembled. It is an amazing place but before I tell you about our tour, I'd like to tell you a bit about the concept that Henry Ford began with. We all know about his assembly line and how it changed manufacturing but his idea for the Rouge Factory was that raw materials would come in and the plant would be able to make cars starting with those raw materials. Steel was made, parts of cars shaped and formed, and then assembled. Everything that was needed was made from scratch. Amazing.

Today I believe many of the parts now come from other factories Ford has built and those parts are all compiled and supplied to the assembly line by quite a computerized choreography. The tour begins with two movies and a warning that no pictures are allowed in the factory area. One movie centers on the life of Henry Ford and the second is quite a production involving robots and a truck that rises from the floor amid theatrical smoke. Throughout the program, the truck that is all white turns different colors and appears to be a real truck through the magic of expertly placed projected video.

From the movie level you take an elevator to the viewing level which is probably about mid-level in the huge assembly building. You peer down at the assembly line while parts of trucks and some full bodies pass overhead moving to their place in the next part of the assembly line.

We watched with amazement at rear windows being installed by robot. Moved to a place where headers were being snapped into place we marveled at the organization. Each truck cab that came down the assembly line was a different color and differ size and some had a sun roof. From a mobile set of slotted cabinets the assembler would reach the next slot in line and pull out the correct header for the truck cab.

At another spot on the line a team of two men installed the gate to the back of the truck bed. As they worked, the platform they stood on moved with the assembly line. When it reached a certain point the platform moved back to work on the next truck moving down the line. The two had only a minute or two to set in the gate and hook up the cables that held it in place.

The engines were installed in another part of the factory that wasn't within view of the observation area that was a large walkway making a square around the assembly area available for viewing.

The orchestration of the whole operation was unfathomable. I wondered what Henry Ford would have thought of his assembly line today.

One last stop on the tour was the observation deck. From there you could look out on the rooftops of the factory building that have been planted with a special mix of succulent plants to contribute to a better environment. Then the guide stationed there pointed out a green line in the employee parking lot. Everyone with a car that was not a Ford had to park to the left of the line. Certainly would make me think twice about what kind of car I drove to work.

Mini Road Trip - Henry Ford Museum

The shift in our plans worked well for this trip as evidenced by the gray and much colder weather we awoke to. Our previous day at Greenfield Village had been quite sunny and warm. This day definitely looked like autumn was arriving--maybe even early winter. So off we went to The Henry Ford Museum where we would be nice and warm and out of any foul weather that might happen.

We were there as the doors opened at 9:30 AM and entered with a large group of high school kids. I thought at first it was an outing for them but actually there is a school that is within the museum--the Henry Ford Academy. My legs were a little sore as we started out. We had logged over 4 miles walking around the village the day before.

The museum has changed a lot from what we remembered. All for the good of course. There is a lot more emphasis on educational information and not just on industry and cars. Sections of the museum included the Civil War (with the chair Lincoln sat in the night he was shot) and the Civil Rights struggle with the actual bus Rosa Parks sat in when she refused to move to the back.

There is a lot of memorabilia from different eras and you are invited to figure out which era you belong in. With our age, we kind of passed through a lot of them. One of the displays that brought big smiles though was the Oscar Meyer Wiener car. Of course, like It's A Small World, it took a while to get the Oscar Meyer song out of my head.

The most intriguing exhibit was the Dymaxion House designed by Buckminster Fuller back in the 1920s. It wasn't actually built though until around 1945. It was the answer to the need for mass produced, affordable, easily transportable and environmentally efficient housing. The structure, made of lightweight steel, aluminum and plastic, is supported by a central column and is built around it in a circle. Supposedly it maximizes space. Lots of perks inside included an enclosed closet full of shelves that rotated to display your clothes. It was said to withstand a tornado that passed close by where it stood in Wichita, Kansas. There's a good post about it at Yesterland. com. 

Wandering through the Heroes of the Sky area, we came upon the Ford Tri Motor. It has a special place in my heart. When I was young, we spent many weekends at Put In Bay, Ohio, in the winter and the only way to the island was to fly in the Ford Tri Motor from Port Clinton. I wonder now though what my mother must have felt every time we went taking her children on a plane built between 1925 and 1933. I guess back then the plane was only 25-30 years old and lovingly cared for although it shook so much on take off I wonder how it stayed together. There is some talk that the plane will be making a comeback to the island in the summertime.

Among the cars on exhibit is a progressive representation of presidential limousines including the one JFK rode in Dallas. Somehow they don't seem as large in real life.

We wandered through the progression of all kinds of cars and trucks--not just Fords, and then headed for the train section. Bob remembered a huge engine there the last time and he wasn't disappointed, It still sits there. The steam engine was built in 1941 and used for hauling coal in the Allegheny Mountains. It weighs 600 tons and towers above you as you walk past it. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to see it working.

For lunch we enjoyed sandwiched in the Michigan Cafe. There is a hot dog dining area by the Oscar Meyer Wiener car but we didn't want to walk all the way back to it. There is also a diner where we had some great coffee and a couple of glazed donuts recommended by our waitress. She was right. As good as Krispy Kreme.

 As we enjoyed our donuts and coffee, we discussed the possibility of getting in the tour of the Ford Rouge Factory. If we did it this afternoon, we could leave first thing in the morning and get home a little earlier. Besides, we really couldn't think of anything else we wanted to do and the factory tour was said to take about two hours. It was another plan shift. We were getting good at those. Never say we aren't spontaneous.

Through My Lens - Greenfield Village

Mini Road Trip - More of Greenfield Village

Built in 1871 in Dayton, Ohio, the Wright home eventually became a part of Greenfield Village. I didn't get a picture of the front of the house because it was decorated for the Halloween festivities going on during evenings on the weekends. I was fascinated though in the parlor when I saw the painted walls and the wallpapered ceiling.

Susan Wright never got to see her boys fly. Maybe that was a good thing. As a mother, it could have been very scary. Their father, Milton, supported their bike shop and their experiments with flight. Neither boy went to college but their sister, Katharine, did.

The Sarah Jordan Boarding House built in Menlo Park, NJ, in 1870 was one of the first homes ever to be wired for electricity. Perhaps that's because many of the men who worked at Menlo Park stayed in the home run by the widow, her adopted daughter and a maid. Since Bob is always sensitive to booking a Bed & Breakfast with an ensuite bathroom, I couldn't help but chuckle and point out that this place was definitely not ensuite as indicated by the two out buildings in the back yard.



One of the more unique and unusual homes in the village is the Mattox House. It was built around 1880 in Bryan County, Georgia. The family lined the walls of their home with newspapers to insulate against the cool Georgia nights in the winter. Amos Mattox worked a variety of jobs to provide for his family during the depression--shoemaker, farmer, barber and preacher. His wife, Grace, was known to help feed the needy.

There were several buildings dedicated to educational history. A large log cabin, the McGuffey Schoolhouse and a smaller log cabin, the McGuffey birthplace. Yes, that McGuffey. The one who wrote the readers that have been around for 200 years. Across from the log cabins is a brick building, the Scotch Settlement School where Henry Ford sat next to his friend, Edsel Rudiman. Apparently the boys enjoyed playing pranks and eventually John Chapman was hired as teacher and paid an extra $5 a month to keep the boys in line.

What struck me most about visiting the school was what was said in the recorded information that played upon entering the door. The school was where morality was taught as much as the three Rs. How far would that go today? And is that perhaps where we've fallen short as a society? Enough. Climbing down from soapbox now.

There were so many good things to see. I could go on and on. The print shop, the tin smith, the weaver (where they had a version of a "computerized" loom using punch cards), the pottery, the train yard. Another favorite spot was the general store with all sorts of interesting items that would be for sale in the late 19th century and early 1900s. The store was often the only place that had a phone and was available to the public. Of course how many other people had phones? So who would you call?

We were pretty tired but when we discovered, by way of Facebook, that one of the kids we had watched grow up at church was working for Ford and just around the corner, we couldn't resist meeting him for dinner. And of course, the younger folks know the best BBQ places.

Mini Road Trip - Greenfield Village

Of course there is a lot of Henry Ford represented here in the Greenfield Village. His childhood home for one and his early Bagley Avenue workshop where he put together his first gas powered car, the quadricycle. The workshop was actually a coal shed behind the duplex he and his wife, Clara, lived. Ford at the time worked as a powerhouse superintendent at the Edison Illuminating Company a short distance away.

The car was built inside the shed but Ford discovered that it would not fit through the door and had to enlarge the entry in order to take his vehicle outside for a test run. The first building of the company is here at Greenfield Village but only a smaller version of the original. Between 1903 and 1905, Ford assembled his cars at stations from purchased parts. It wasn't until 1913 that he came up with the moving assembly line.

The Mack Avenue plant produced 15 cars a day. The Model A sold for $750. And as it is today, various options were available at an additional cost.

Ford grew up and lived in an era when great innovations were being discovered and produced. He was truly an admirer of Edison and eventually opted to move the Menlo Park building from New Jersey to Michigan. Unfortunately, the building had so badly deteriorated that they had to rely on building plans to reconstruct Edison's workplace. Some of the materials of the original building were used but much of it is newer construction.

The Wright brothers were also among the innovators and inventors that Ford admired. Their cycle shop is one of the more interesting shops in the village. As you move through it, you can see the wind tunnel they built to test their theories of how to get lift for their aircraft. It's all in a glass box and the wind is produced by turning a crank. Once you get it up to speed, the small model wing lifts up from it's resting position.

In the back of the shop is the bare skeleton of the plane they built to fly at Kitty Hawk. The guide in the shop explained that the Wright brothers eventually built in a control for turning the aircraft that involved laying down in a cradle that moved as you moved your hips so that you could bank left or right while still holding the controls to the aircraft's power in your hands.

If you were into motors and huge generators, there was plenty to see. I couldn't help but think of how my father must have been enamored with all that he saw on that visit so many years ago. Dad repaired motors and did electrical wiring.

Of course, looking at some of the motors, I could hear my mother telling the story of how she had to wrap wires around a spindle keeping count of the number of times around on a match book (one match bent down for every 10 times around) and still answer the phone. Once his business got going, she was replaced by several employees and a secretary.

I'm glad. It gave her time to be my mom.

Mini Road Trip - Dearborn, Michigan

What's an Ohio Buckeye doing going to visit Michigan during football season? Why exploring The Henry Ford, of course!

I know. We just finished a long road trip but there were a couple of weeks between our return home from out west and our mini road trip to Dearborn. The leaves were just starting to turn and the weather was predicted to be warm and sunny--at least for a few days. After a short stop to visit my brother and his family at Put In Bay, Ohio, for the Oktoberfest, we drove another couple of hours up to Dearborn.

Entering the Dearborn area is like entering the Seattle area and seeing Microsoft all over the place only here it is Ford. The Henry Ford is the complex of Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum along with several other attractions including the Ford Rouge Factory Tour which was on our list to see.

My first visit to Greenfield Village was when I was about eight years old. Then Bob and I spent our tenth anniversary there and later we took our kids. It has changed tremendously over the years. The museum and village were a passion for Henry Ford who felt the need to preserve history and inspire genius. He began actually with a school in 1929 and from there the project blossomed into a museum and a village full of historical buildings including the Menlo Park complex of Edison's and the Wright Brothers Cycle Shop as well as several types of farms, industrial sites and homes or replicas of homes of famous Americans who contributed to industry and/or farming.

There are almost 100 structures to see, most of which you can enter and see furnishings or machines of the era. Old vintage powered and horse drawn buses can alleviate some of the walking over the 200 acre spread (for an additional cost of course). There are also a dozen or more vintage Fords that are available to ride and even if you choose to walk as we did, they lend to the atmosphere of the historic village.

Around the perimeter is, as we were told, is the oldest regularly scheduled train pulled by a steam engine. Powered by steam, there is a huge coal tower that is filled with the coal used to fire the boilers in the steam engine. The roundhouse held several other engines that are also used for the scenic train ride.

The day was gorgeous and the colors of autumn radiant. Several of the houses had people in interpretive costume who explained some of the history behind the homes. Other places held more guides who provided stories and explanations for things we were seeing. Weaving, pottery making and glass blowing demonstrations are always interesting but we also found that that for $5 you could make a small brass candlestick in one of the buildings.

The highlight of the day was having lunch in the Eagle Tavern. The tavern was brought to Greenfield Village from Clinton, MI, where it was originally built in 1831. In keeping with the time period, the tables are all large and seat eight to ten people. We were told as we were seated that others might be joining us. Back in nineteenth century tavern life, dining was communal. In keeping with the historic aspects, the tavern offers seasonal and locally grown food products. I ordered squash soup and Bob got the corn chowder. Both were delicious and came with muffins, cornbread and rolls and the best blueberry jam I've had in a long time.

I will highlight some of the things we enjoyed the most and piqued our interest in the next couple of posts.