I watched a show on the History Channel this week about assembly lines. They featured Ford's Rouge river assembly plant. This intrigued me to look at the facility today and see what it looked like. To do that, I used Google earth, and I found www.thehenryford.org/rogue
At the peak of it's operation, from 1930-1950 or so, the complex employed about 100,000 workers. The plant basically made cars from beginning to end...ore went in one end, and finished vehicles came out the other. The plant even produced it's own electricity! Today, the plant only employs a small fraction of it's once mighty workforce...about 5000. Today, Ford owns only about half of the complex from what they previously owned, and has no more river frontage. Ford got out of the steel mill business, and the glass making business, among many others, and in the process, sold of the sections of the plant that performed those duties. While some of the employment at Rogue is being performed by third party, and not Ford, there is still significantly less work being performed there than it was during it's peak.
According to the web site, Ford was intending to close the plant in 1992 when the only car still in production there, the Musting, was slated to be discontinued. You can thank Mustang fans, and the employees at Rogue for saving such an American icon
Today the plant also produces pickup trucks and SUV's, and the sections owned by Ford have been significantly modernized.
From Google earth, large sections of the complex appear to be either abandoned, or dormant, as there is not smoke coming from stacks, no vehicles or supples sitting outside, and it all looks dirty and dingy like it has not been maintained in a long while. In particular, the dock area around the steel mill and such that was the original section of the plant that Henry Ford build in the 20's. Only the northeast quadrant of the facility appears to be used. This is the area I guess that was modernized.
Looking farther out on the city of Detroit in Google Maps shows extreme dispair of magnificent proportions. There are significant square miles of residental neighborhoods around detroit. However, more than half of the neighborhoods have empty lots that can be easily seen from the aerial photographs. I also noticed that there is hardly any traffic seen on the streets, unlike aerial photographs of New York, DC, and other thriving cities. Many of the downtown areas too are not occupied by large high-rise buildings, but parking lots...very empty parking lots! Detroit is home to 950,000 people, and about half of those rent their homes, and don't own them. (http://detroit.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm) Detroit is a very large city geographically, but significant portions of it are abandoned and unoccupied. It's population peak was in 1970, when it had over 1.6 million people living there. This, was also the peak of the American automotive industry.
This is very sad. I have seen pictures of many of the homes in the area from both yesteryear and today. Many bungalows and forsquares of which were built before WWII and were quite nice family homes at the time and housed the autoworkers and supporting businesses. You can see where the American dream used to be very, very real for the people of Detroit, and they lived very well off. Ford, in particular provided many jobs for minorities, and allowed the American dream to be a reality for not just caucaians. Today however, Detroit is known for it's high crime, especially among it's black population.
If you have ever seen Eminem's movie "The 8-mile", it appears to depict life in Detroit quite accurately....of torn apart families barey making it by scraping together any dime they could find. One of the most profound parts of the movie I remember was when he was with his friends, and they spotted an abandoned house. They chose to burn the house down becasue it was a source of crime. One of his friends said "Funny, I always wanted to live in a house just like this one"
I find this interesting when comparing it to my own hometown here of Richmond, which is home to 1.1 million people (counties and suburbs included) and is doing pretty good economically. Population wise, the area is bigger than Detroit. The greater Richmond area occupies a significantly less area geographically. We have been blessed with the telecom and other high-tech industries, and thankfully have spared the despair that has afflicted many manufacturing & industrial based cities like Detroit. It is just so sad to see a city that once provided people with a great place to live with such blight. I hope that it is something that can be turned around, but with the state of manufacturing in the USA today, I don't see much hope, and worst of all, I see
At the peak of it's operation, from 1930-1950 or so, the complex employed about 100,000 workers. The plant basically made cars from beginning to end...ore went in one end, and finished vehicles came out the other. The plant even produced it's own electricity! Today, the plant only employs a small fraction of it's once mighty workforce...about 5000. Today, Ford owns only about half of the complex from what they previously owned, and has no more river frontage. Ford got out of the steel mill business, and the glass making business, among many others, and in the process, sold of the sections of the plant that performed those duties. While some of the employment at Rogue is being performed by third party, and not Ford, there is still significantly less work being performed there than it was during it's peak.
According to the web site, Ford was intending to close the plant in 1992 when the only car still in production there, the Musting, was slated to be discontinued. You can thank Mustang fans, and the employees at Rogue for saving such an American icon
Today the plant also produces pickup trucks and SUV's, and the sections owned by Ford have been significantly modernized. From Google earth, large sections of the complex appear to be either abandoned, or dormant, as there is not smoke coming from stacks, no vehicles or supples sitting outside, and it all looks dirty and dingy like it has not been maintained in a long while. In particular, the dock area around the steel mill and such that was the original section of the plant that Henry Ford build in the 20's. Only the northeast quadrant of the facility appears to be used. This is the area I guess that was modernized.
Looking farther out on the city of Detroit in Google Maps shows extreme dispair of magnificent proportions. There are significant square miles of residental neighborhoods around detroit. However, more than half of the neighborhoods have empty lots that can be easily seen from the aerial photographs. I also noticed that there is hardly any traffic seen on the streets, unlike aerial photographs of New York, DC, and other thriving cities. Many of the downtown areas too are not occupied by large high-rise buildings, but parking lots...very empty parking lots! Detroit is home to 950,000 people, and about half of those rent their homes, and don't own them. (http://detroit.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm) Detroit is a very large city geographically, but significant portions of it are abandoned and unoccupied. It's population peak was in 1970, when it had over 1.6 million people living there. This, was also the peak of the American automotive industry.
This is very sad. I have seen pictures of many of the homes in the area from both yesteryear and today. Many bungalows and forsquares of which were built before WWII and were quite nice family homes at the time and housed the autoworkers and supporting businesses. You can see where the American dream used to be very, very real for the people of Detroit, and they lived very well off. Ford, in particular provided many jobs for minorities, and allowed the American dream to be a reality for not just caucaians. Today however, Detroit is known for it's high crime, especially among it's black population.
If you have ever seen Eminem's movie "The 8-mile", it appears to depict life in Detroit quite accurately....of torn apart families barey making it by scraping together any dime they could find. One of the most profound parts of the movie I remember was when he was with his friends, and they spotted an abandoned house. They chose to burn the house down becasue it was a source of crime. One of his friends said "Funny, I always wanted to live in a house just like this one"
I find this interesting when comparing it to my own hometown here of Richmond, which is home to 1.1 million people (counties and suburbs included) and is doing pretty good economically. Population wise, the area is bigger than Detroit. The greater Richmond area occupies a significantly less area geographically. We have been blessed with the telecom and other high-tech industries, and thankfully have spared the despair that has afflicted many manufacturing & industrial based cities like Detroit. It is just so sad to see a city that once provided people with a great place to live with such blight. I hope that it is something that can be turned around, but with the state of manufacturing in the USA today, I don't see much hope, and worst of all, I see
