Yahoo Autos Ford's River Rouge Complex Celebrates a Century of Nonstop Production
Born from Henry Ford's desire to own a self-sustaining facility capable of taking in raw materials on one end and spitting out finished automobiles on the other, "the Rouge," as it's referred to in Detroit parlance, today celebrates its 100th birthday. Henry Ford built the plant with the intention to create the largest vertically integrated production facility in the world, featuring a native electricity production facility, docks for freighter ships, miles of railroad tracks, and an integrated steel mill. The River Rouge Complex, just south of downtown, is still operating-its Dearborn Truck Plant cranks out some 1200 Ford F-150 pickups a day-all the while standing as a living relic of the industrial age, with the distinction of being the longest continuously producing auto plant in the nation all while running a factory tour that more than a million people have taken.
The complex was built on land that was part of a 2000-acre tract along the River Rouge that Ford purchased in 1915, the property's fate was determined in 1917 when Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Undersecretary of the U.S. Navy, made a deal with Ford to produce Eagle-class patrol boats to hunt German submarines. World War I ended soon after the first Eagle boats rolled off the line in 1918, but one legacy of it was the widening of the Rouge River, which made it possible for ore freighters to travel farther up the river.
Ore to Assembly
With the delivery system in now place, the first iron-ore oven went online in October of 1919. This was the largest facility of its type in the world at the time. The electricity plant came online in 1920, and blast furnaces were added in 1920 and 1922. Glass production came online in 1923, and steelmaking furnaces and rolling mills were added in 1926, at which point the Rouge was producing virtually every component needed to assemble a Model T. Despite this, final assembly for the Model T remained at Ford's Highland Park plant. The honor for the first vehicle produced entirely at the Rouge goes to the Fordson tractor. Finally, by the time of the 1927 Model A's debut, Ford's dream of an "ore-to assembly" facility had come true. By 1929, there were 103,000 employees working at the facility, and the Rouge had its own multi-station fire department, a police force, and a fully staffed hospital. A car a minute was rolling off the plant's assembly line.
Ford’s penchant for ruling over his empire like he was playing with a life-size model train layout is well known, and the constant striving for efficiency and cost-cutting during the Depression began to take a human toll. Tensions peaked in May 1937 when a group of union organizers, led by Walter Reuther, were assaulted by Ford's security detail and members of his group of hired henchmen as they tried to hand out union literature at the plant. (Reuther would go on to be president of the United Auto Workers from 1946 to 1970.) Ford settled, and the Rouge cranked out Jeeps, and engines for tanks and planes for the war effort.
Civilian production restarted in 1945; Henry Ford died in 1947. That same year, Ford F-150 production started, and the highly successful Mustang came online in 1964; the Mercury Cougar joined in 1966. Mercury Capri production began in 1979, when it was switched from the Euro-based model to become a near clone of the Fox-body Mustang. But the Rouge's belching smokestacks, once a sign of progress and a healthy economy, started to be less attractive to a more environmentally aware public later in the century. In part because of the rise of a strong middle class, a development that likely would not have been possible without the precedent-setting wages Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler paid for both skilled and unskilled labor, the public entered a new age of concern about health and the environment and began to pressed the government to regulate industrial pollution.
To adapt, Ford began divesting itself form mining, lumbering, and glassmaking operations, finally selling the Rouge's steel foundry to Rouge Steel in 1989. The sale included all of the river frontage and docks as well as about 45 percent of the original 2000 acres. The Rouge continued but at a very different pace from its glory years.
Things began looking up in 1997, however, when Ford and the UAW made agreements to modernize the Rouge, including an environmentally advanced paint shop and an entirely new power plant utilizing the latest advances in technology. Unfortunately, an explosion of the number-six boiler in 1999 killed six workers, marring the rebirth with tragedy.
Today, the Rouge stands as an example of moving forward while honoring the past, a modern efficient facility featuring a 10.4-acre Living Roof, numerous wetlands and vegetated ditches called swales, hundreds of newly planted trees, and the world's largest porous pavement lot. Home to the Dearborn Truck Plant where the popular F-150 pickup has been made since 2004, the facility is designed to minimize waste at all stages. It employs extensive recycling procedures including the capture of paint-shop waste gases that are turned into fuel cells to help power the plant.
The Rouge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in June of 1978 and now offers a popular tour. With the much ballyhooed Detroit renaissance still in full swing, we expect the Rouge's reign to continue unabated.
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