The River Runs Through It

Ford's Rouge Manufacturing Complex

The River Runs Through It
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Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

February, 2005 - Ray T. Bohacz

Whether you are a Ford fanatic or not, you still have to be enamored and amazed by the creation of Henry Ford called the Rouge. Mr. Ford's lifelong quest was not only to improve the quality of automobiles in the early 1900s but to reduce the cost so that more people could afford to buy them. This logic was partially philanthropic but was also rooted in an equal amount of business acumen since he wanted his company to be positioned to supply the automotive needs of not only America but the world.

Henry Ford is best known as being the creator of the Model T, but little is acknowledged about an even greater accomplishment, the construction of the Rouge Center. World War I had shown Ford that production stoppages due to an interruption in materials and vendor supplied parts would be a way of life for the growing industrial base in America. Having a mind that never rested upon its laurels, he was not willing to accept that.

Ford Motor Company already owned 700,000 acres of forest, iron mines and limestone quarries in Northern Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Ford mines covered thousands of acres in coal-rich Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. In addition, Ford even purchased and operated a rubber plantation in Brazil.

Henry Ford's dream was a concept that he termed "vertical integration," which he described as a continuous, nonstop process from raw material to finished product, with no pause even for warehousing or storage.

The success of Ford's "let's-try-it-and see" business edict afforded him the opportunity and necessary funds to purchase land around his childhood farm in Dearborn, Michigan. In 1915, Ford started buying property along the marshlands where, as a boy, he would go bird watching and hiking. In total, he accumulated a 2,000-acre stretch of bottomland along the Rouge River. With no particular intent in mind for the parcel, Ford often played with the idea of making the property into a bird sanctuary. That was until the concept of vertical integration became fully developed in his mind and Undersecretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt engaged Henry Ford's construction genius to build boats for the government.

Convinced that vertical integration was the future of manufacturing, Ford put the concept of the Rouge Center on paper, and work began in 1917; it ended in 1928. But the complex was never considered complete by Mr. Ford. As soon as a more efficient machine or process was found, the old equipment was ripped out and replaced. As one Rouge plant engineer said, "It doesn't matter what the equipment cost to install or how long it has been in operation. We tear out whole departments to make one or two new changes."

In 1917, a three-story structure called Building B was erected on the Rouge site to build Eagle Boats, commonly known as submarine chasers. Later, torpedo boats and PT boats were also produced there. Building B was the first substantial Rouge structure, and today serves as part of the Dearborn Assembly Plant that built Mustangs up until May 2004.

The first land vehicles actually assembled at the Rouge were not cars but farm tractors. No sooner had Henry Ford achieved low-cost transportation with the Model T than he set his sights on doing the same for the world's farmers. Full production of the world's first mass-produced tractor, the Fordson, began at the Rouge in 1920.

The Rouge Center is located a few miles south of Detroit at the confluence of the Rouge and Detroit Rivers and was the first auto plant in the world where you were able to see the entire auto-making process in one day. Contrary to other operations, Ford's Rouge Center consisted of ore docks, steel furnaces, coke ovens, rolling mills, glass furnaces and plate glass rollers. Also at the location were a tire making plant, stamping plant, engine casting plant, frame and assembly plant, transmission plant, radiator plant, tool and die plant and, at one time, even a paper mill. A massive power plant produced enough electricity to light a city the size of Detroit, and a soybean conversion plant turned the agricultural product into plastic auto parts.

The glass plant, built in 1922, was the first in the world to produce laminated safety glass for auto windshields, beginning with the Model A. The plant rolled out 13.4 miles of glass each day.

The Rouge had its own railroad, with 100 miles of track and 16 locomotives. A scheduled bus network and 15 miles of paved roads kept both the factories and employees working. Many considered it a city without residents. Employment was at its peak at the facility in the 1930s, when more than 100,000 people worked there. To accommodate this large number of people, a multi-station fire department, police force, a fully staffed hospital and a maintenance crew of 5,000 were required.

The Rouge shipyard was created by the widening of the Rouge River for the Eagle Boat project. Although the war ended before the Ford Eagle Boats ever went into action, the river improvements allowed the shipyard to become the destination of the massive Ford-owned lake freighters filled with ore, coal, rubber and lumber to supply the Highland Park Plant and the Rouge as it came into existence.

The coke ovens and blast furnaces of the foundry were fired up in 1919. The foundry provided iron, steel, brass and bronze castings. The foundry alone covered 30 acres and was, at its inception, the largest on earth. Eventually, the Rouge produced virtually every Model T component including the engine block, but assembly of the car remained at Highland Park.

During that time, a new car rolled from the assembly line every 49 seconds. Each day, workers smelted more than 6,000 tons of iron and made 500 tons of glass; and every month, 3,500 mop heads were consumed because Mr. Ford insisted that every part of the gigantic Rouge facility glisten at all times. Those who toured the Rouge were especially struck by the entire complex's cleanliness. Every floor was scrubbed clean, every wall recently painted, every window sparkled, every locomotive glistened as if it were on display. Ford was known to shut the entire operation down in anticipation of a special guest and have all the workers clean, paint, and primp every part of the one-mile-long and one-and-a-half-mile-wide complex. The Rouge consisted of 93 buildings that totaled 15,767,708 square feet of floor area, and was crisscrossed by 120 miles of conveyors.

Waste, in Henry Ford's opinion, was one of the great evils of the world. Ford recycled or found uses for virtually all waste products. Waste gas from his coke ovens was used to make tar, benzol, gas for lighting and other chemical by-products. Thirty tons of ore dust produced every day was reprocessed and used again. In addition, furnace slag was used as an ingredient in concrete for Ford's building projects. Henry Ford is also credited with inventing the charcoal briquettes used in backyard barbecues, entirely because he wanted to find a use for growing piles of wood scraps.

Not only was the Rouge a breakthrough in manufacturing concepts, it was a turning point for industrial architecture. Most of the buildings at the Rouge, and several hundred more in the Ford empire, were designed by Albert Kahn, one of the most renowned architects of the day. Although the buildings were designed pragmatically for their manufacturing function, Kahn managed to add a sense of light and air. When the Rouge glass plant was erected with heavily glassed upper walls and ceiling, it was called "the single factory that carries industrial architecture forward more than any other."

The one real blemish on the Rouge Center occurred on May 26, 1937, when a group of union organizers led by Walter Reuther attempted to distribute union literature at the facility. Ford security, along with a gang of hired thugs, beat the union organizers severely. This moment became known as the Battle of the Overpass and was a pivotal event for the United Auto Workers and other unions.

Ford had settled with the UAW, which came to represent its workers before World War II started. During the war, the giant complex produced jeeps, tanks, trucks, staff cars and tractors. Another key product for the war effort was the engine for the B-24 Liberator bomber that was not built at the Rouge but nearby at Ford's Willow Run Plant.

The Gate 4 Overpass was recently reconstructed as a part of the Ford Rouge Center revitalization project and is recognized as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service for the events that led to the formation of the United Auto Workers union. It is considered one of the ten most significant sites in the history of the American labor movement.

Prior to the outbreak of WWII, when America and Germany were on friendly terms, German engineers came to the Rouge in the Teens and early 1920s, to study Ford's approach to manufacturing. They coined the word "Fordismus." Ford's concepts were brought back to Germany and, though not a historically documented fact, were mostly likely implemented to fuel Hitler's war machine not long afterward. Henry Ford's theory of designing a manufacturing facility for flow and efficiency eventually became the standard of global industry and the precursor of today's modern just-in-time manufacturing.

During the heyday of the Rouge and the industrialization of America, smoke rising from a stack was a positive sign of full employment. As the world matured, it was soon to be looked at not as opportunity and growth, but destruction of the environment.

In 1947, at the pinnacle of the Rouge's success, Henry Ford died.

In the 1960s, Henry Ford II and his team of "Whiz Kid" managers continued to fully employ the Rouge through the decade, but it operated in a distinctly different world from Henry's days. Air and water quality standards were developed by government agencies. More manufacturing facilities were located in communities, and this raised awareness of the impact of emissions, which led to government controls. This, in part, led to closure of some older facilities and marked the Rouge, the largest single industrial complex in the world, as probably the last of its kind.

Ford began concentrating on its core business of producing cars and trucks. The company grew to rely more on suppliers, and extracted itself from other fields such as mining, lumbering and glass making.

In 1981, steel-making operations at the Rouge became part of a new independent company. When these operations were sold to Rouge Steel in 1989, Ford gave up ownership of all Rouge River frontage and boat docks, as well as about 45 percent of the original 2,000 acres.

Over time, the number of operations and jobs at the Rouge dropped. Environmental pressure mounted to retire old Brownfield manufacturing facilities and replace them with state-of-the-art Greenfield sites.

The Rouge is much more than metal and mortar. It has evolved into a community with a strong sense of its own identity. Passion and adversity forged the heart and soul of the Rouge. Families worked from generation to generation in the Rouge, and few in the hourly or salaried ranks were willing to walk away from their hard-earned heritage.

Over the years, Ford built the first V-8, the first Mercury, the 1949 Ford and the original Thunderbird at the Rouge, and it was the only plant that produced the Mustang for 40 years. In fact, in 1992, the Mustang was the only car being built at the complex. Management was considering ending Mustang production and eliminating assembly operations at Dearborn Assembly.

UAW Local 600, in cooperation with Alex Trotman, then president of Ford's North American Operations, set out to keep the Mustang in production and to keep production at the Rouge. "Save the Mustang" became synonymous with "Save the Rouge." Working together, the company and the UAW established a modern operating agreement and fostered numerous innovations to increase efficiency and quality. The company, for its part, would redesign and reintroduce the Mustang, and invest in modern equipment.

In 1997, the Rouge was making a comeback. UAW Local 600 membership and the company approved the Rouge Viability Agreement, and the Ford Board of Directors agreed to modernize the company's oldest and largest manufacturing complex. The first efforts focused on extensive renovations to the Dearborn Engine and Fuel Tank Plant and other plants at the Rouge. The Dearborn Assembly Plant would get an environmentally advanced paint operation, and plans called for CMS Energy to develop an entirely new power plant by the year 2000.

Ground was already being cleared for the new high-efficiency power plant when tragedy struck. The Number Six boiler at the old Rouge Power Plant exploded, and six employees were killed. A dozen more were seriously injured. Within two hours of the explosion, Ford Chairman and CEO Bill Ford arrived at the scene, offering whatever support he could. "Our employees are like members of our extended family," Ford said. "My heart sank. It's about the worst feeling you could ever have."

The outpouring of concern and support across the Rouge was remarkable. Employees throughout the complex took time to give blood and to offer help, from food to prayers. Tragedy demonstrated that the Rouge was truly a community.

The Rouge entered the new millennium humbled by disaster and downsizing, yet still an industrial giant. Currently, Ford employs more than 6,000 workers at the Rouge, which is now called the Ford Rouge Center. Its 600-acre site remains Ford Motor Company's largest single industrial complex, and a massive revitalization is still under way to restore this icon's glory.

The new Ford Rouge Center will be the second home of the redesigned F-150 pickup truck. The center will offer flexible manufacturing and will eventually be able to build nine models from three different platforms.

During the Fall of 2004, the last remaining vestige of the original Building B will be torn down to make room for a modern paint shop for Dearborn Truck. The Mustang production will move to Flat Rock, Michigan for the totally redesigned 2005 model.

The Dearborn Truck Plant will follow Henry Ford's desire to blend conversation with productivity. The new building boasts a living roof that is 10.4 acres of sedum, a drought-resistant perennial groundcover, planted into a specially layered bed. The living roof absorbs rain water and carbon dioxide, plus it reduces energy costs by helping insulate the building's final assembly area. The roof is expected to last twice as long as a traditional roof. The living roof at the Ford Rouge Center is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest in the world. It will also integrate into a larger storm-water management system that will benefit the nearby Rouge River and effectively use water resources.

Once again, and more than 100 years after the birth of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford's dream complex is still a flagship of American manufacturing, engineering and cooperation between labor and management. The Dearborn Truck Plant is the centerpiece of the new Ford Rouge Center, the largest industrial redevelopment project in American history and a representation of Ford's vision of sustainable manufacturing for the future.

The Ford Rouge Center started welcoming visitors and providing free tours back in May 2004, and should be added to your "must-visit" list for next summer's vacation.

This article originally appeared in the February, 2005 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.

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