Day 16 - Greenfield Village

One of my favorite places to visit in Detroit is Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum. Judie and I decided that if the weather was bad we would go to the museum, but if the day was nice we would walk around the village. Fortunately the weather is amazing so we decide to walk the village.

Henry Ford opened Greenfield Villager in 1929 as a school for his autoworkers. His philosophy was to learn through doing, and he wanted a place that would teach kids that way. Ford also realized that a lot of America's industrial history was being lost as buildings, plants, and methods were updated with newer technology. So he started moving buildings to Detroit and setting them up in his Greenfield Village.

The place eventually became the living history museum it is today, and book ended against Mackinac Island, you get this sense that humans are pretty dang innovative and resilient. I mean, we did manage to have meaningful lives before cell phones, social media, and even electricity.

We arrived about lunch time and discovered that the village hosts a traditional Tavern lunch meal which we decided to try. Eating period accurate food, served by staff wearing period accurate clothing, in a period accurate dining room was a really cool experience. I had the Trout, Judie the beef. Notice how the salt and pepper were served in tiny little dishes. You had to take a pinch of salt or pepper for your food. The starter game with house made pickles, home made bread, and hand churned butter. Amazing.

Industrialization before electricity. Early factories ran on gas lamps, and belt power. That's right. Belts. Early tools used foot pedals to turn drills, lathes, and sewing machines. Those human powered devices later gave way to factory floors like this one where shafts run across the ceiling, and huge belts would bring the "power" down to the tools. I can hardly imagine working in a workshop with no electricity. These were the tools that built the tools that made their future which became our today.

Model T's

So one of the fun things you can do at the Village is to take a ride in a genuine Ford Model T. I asked the staff if the cars were replicas and they said absolutely not. They have I think between 14 and 16 cars, and 10 of them are authentic - restored model T's. The other set of cars were from a (mostly failed) attempt by Ford to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the model T. Ford Motor Company wanted to make 100 model T's for the 2003 centennial but the good old American Federal Government stepped in and squashed those happy plans by insisting the cars be manufactured to 2002 federal automotive standards because they were newly made cars. Sigh... nothing like bureaucrats to ruin the fun. So only a handful of the cars were actually manufactured - mostly as parts - and put together as functional cars. One ended up in Ford's world head quarters, one in a museum in London and the rest in the park.

I wondered how they maintained the cars, and the driver told me, no one makes cast iron any more, so they had to get parts from a "junk yard" in Arizona where they have a stock pile of old parts and old model T's. I wonder how long they can keep the cars running. There is a garage with mechanics who maintain the vehicles. I wonder how many miles they have on them.