Fordlândia // Henry Ford’s Brazilian Ghost Town from agbales on Vimeo.
If there’s a pilgrimage for the industrialized world, it probably ends in the Amazon Rainforest, at the center of a abandoned town called Fordlândia.
By 1928, Henry Ford had just completed construction on the Ford River Rouge Complex, the largest integrated factory in the world. He controlled his supply chain and just about every resource he needed—everything except rubber.
So Ford directed hundreds of employees from Detroit to work alongside natives to establish a prefab colony on 2.5 million acres of Brazilian forest.
Fordlândia looks like a Midwestern city transplanted to the jungle: small family homes and factories sit in rows under water towers and overgrown trees.
Ford spent billions on infrastructure. He commissioned a library, a church, a school, and indoor plumbing, but he also wanted to transport and reform American society. For this, the town was complete with ice-cream shops, square dances, and hamburgers.
But Ford’s vision found compounding failure. While the rubber tree is native to the jungle, the trees were planted so close together that blight and predatory insects were rampant.
Harsh schedules, prohibition of alcohol, and bans on both women and tobacco within city limits sparked a major revolt of indigenous workers in 1930. These tensions also created an industry for merchant riverboats that would supply these forbidden resources.
By 1945 synthetic rubber delivered a final blow to the dream and Henry Ford’s grandson pulled the plug. The remains intact as it slowly loses ground back to the rainforest.
[Click to listen to the full audio at KMUW.]
