Day 21 - Spending the Day With Henry Ford

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It was cool in the room when we woke up this morning, a good sign that we still had electricity. We didn't have far to go today as we only planned to visit the Henry Ford Museum and luckily it was only 2 miles away. We slept in as best we could and after a quick breakfast we set out for the Ford. We arrived just as it was opening and looked at the myriad of options. There are basically 4 sections to the complex. The Ford Museum of Innovation, Greenfield Village, F150 Assembly Plant Tour, and the Giant Screen which was really an iMax. Since we were only here one day and didn't want to feel too rushed, we chose the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. We saw the Corvette Assembly tour a number of years ago and frankly I am doing my own assembly tour in my garage as I build my own pickup truck, and an iMax is cool, but the films they were showing were similar to most iMax's.

As we began to head into the Museum, we talked to the information guy who recommended that since we were going to be here all day, we should start with Greenfield Village in the morning, while the temperature was still cool and in the heat of the afternoon we could move into the air conditioned museum. That sounded smart to us, so we headed over to the Greenfield Village. The Greenfield Village is a replica of a late 19th to early 20th century town. It covers 80 acres and includes most of the activities that you would expect of that time in history.

First stop was the "Working Farms" which is a replica of the Firestone Farm and included a farmhouse, a barn with livestock and fields where wheat was being grown. Women in period costume showed us the typical meal, and explained what it takes to run a farm household. There were also many examples of farm machinery used at that time. The bottom of the barn included some livestock, but mostly sheep including some recently born baby lambs. From the farm, we moved over to "Liberty Craftworks" where they had a 19th century sawmill that showed how lumber was cut. But the interesting part were the various shops. There was a cider shop, pottery shop, a weaving shop, miller shop, printing shop, tin shop, carding mill, and a glass shop. Most were working shops where workers in period costumes were actually using the machinery of the shop. The glass and the pottery shop are the largest, as they actually manufacture merchandise for sale in the gift shop. It was interesting to see how difficult most of these tasks were compared to how things are done today.

From the craftworks, we moved over to "Railroad Junction". Here, of course, was my favorite. They had a working roundhouse for the engines including all the maintenance equipment that would normally be housed in the roundhouse. They needed to have all that equipment, since the roundhouse also contained 3 hand-shovel steam locomotives with room for the 4th steam locomotive that was used for train rides around the village. They restored one of the locomotives over 6 1/2 years using the equipment in the roundhouse, and also use it to maintain the other working locomotives. If there was one obvious theme of this museum that made it different from any other I've been to, it was that there was a concentration on the machinery to either build or maintain the items on exhibit. They called it "machines to make machines" and as a retired engineer, I found it fascinating.

From the rail yard, we moved over to "Main Street" which was a typical turn of the century downtown area. There was a general store, chapel, school, typical things necessary for day to day life in the village. As we passed through main Street, we headed over to "Henry Ford's Model T". There was a tourguide who walked us through some of Henry Ford's original Models A through S leading up to the Model T. He talked about the assembly line and how Henry Ford paid his employees the unheard sum of $5 for an 8 hour day. Typical wages were more like $2 for a 12-14 hour day. Ford reasoned that if he paid his employees well, and gave them free time, they would need to buy, and could afford to buy his cars. And he was right! In this area, they also gave demonstration rides in a real Model T through the town, and as tempting as it was, the lines were pretty log so we settled for taking some pictures of the Model T's driving through town.

From the Model T's we went to "Edison at Work" which had lots a replica of Edison's Menlo Park complex along with some of his original equipment. As with other parts of the village, the concentration was on the machinery used to develop and produce some of Edison's inventions rather than the inventions themselves. There was a heavy concentration on power generation including a fill size power station. The powerplant was really interesting and showed the steam boilers that provided the steam for the large size steam engines that turned the dynamo's on the floor above. Unfortunately, Edison had insisted on DC electricity and in the end lost out to Tesla and Westinghouse with the more versatile AC electricity.

The last section was called "Porches and Parlors" and was a combination of actual buildings and replicas from the time period. Some were Ford's and Edison's boyhood homes, examples of Edison's first houses wired for electricity, and other houses of famous people. We toured some of them, but by now it was getting past noon, and we wanted to head over to the museum. Before we headed into the museum, we stopped of a quick lunch in the Museum Cafe, and then we were ready to go.

As we walked into the museum the first thing we saw in "Railroads" was this HUGE steam locomotive. It was an Appalachian logging engine and was much larger than any others we had seen so far. There were also a few of the first steam locomotives along with a beautifully restored steam engine called "The President" as it was one used by Calvin Coolidge. From railroads, we moved into "Driving America" which was the expected car museum section, but it didn't really concentrate on Ford, but more on the automobile evolution and some of the more significant changes over the years. It also included some early travel trailers, hotel cabins, and even a tribute to the Holiday Inn. It also covered roadside diners from the early rail car style to the beginnings of McDonald's.

From the cars, we headed over to "Heroes of the Sky" which had several innovative aircraft including an auto-gyro. They had, of course, the Ford Tri-Motor, and a section on the Byrd North Pole expedition. From the aircraft we checked out several "Presidential Vehicles" from the carriage of Teddy Roosevelt to the Lincoln limousine of Ronald Reagan. Next was the "With Liberty and Justice For All" which had many perspectives on various events of early American history which ended with a section on the rise of the KKK and the desegregation of the South and the actual bus ridden by Rosa Parks.

The rest of the Museum focused on innovation across America. There were several really large steam engines once used in manufacturing. There were lots of early inventions some of which continues to improve over the years and others that fell by the wayside. There were groupings of things that were popular by decade from the 1920's to the 1990's. It was fun to see things like video games, answering machines, VCR's and other devices from the times I was growing up. They even had the only known Dymaxion House, a first design of Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the Geodesic Dome, and it was a circular house made of aircraft materials like aluminum and Lucite. It was intended to be built in the WWII aircraft factories now that the war was over. They only ever built one prototype, but a family lived in it for over 20 years until it was disassembled and sent to the museum.

By 4:00 it was getting time to head back to the hotel. We thoroughly enjoyed both the Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, but Jody had some laundry to do before heading into Ohio in the morning. After finishing the laundry, we were looking for somewhere good for dinner, but there didn't seem to be much in this section of Dearborn. But I checked with TripAdvisor and it turned out the #1 restaurant in Dearborn was a pizza place called Buddy's Pizza and it was only a mile down the street. So we hopped on teh bike and had some delicious Detroit style pan pizza. In the morning, we leave for Columbus, OH where Jody gets to see her childhood friend Fran and we make a quick stop in Auburn, OH for one small auto museum.

10.2 Miles Today

3304.6 Miles Total

0.0 Gallons Today

85.264 Gallons Total

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