Fordlândia: Henry Ford's All-American Rubber Boom "Utopia" In The Amazon

3°49'48.05"S 55°29'48.34"W

(from Wikimedia Commons)

    Deep in the Amazonian jungle, next to the course of the Tapajós River, a depressing deteriorated landscape fills the atmosphere with a quirky sensation of failure mixed with grief and fear. Haunted and heartbreaking at the same time, the landscape of a rotten utopia which had died just after its birth depicts concrete structures overgrown by lianes, an empty factory with smashed windows and a lone-standing water tower witnessing how the years pass. Uncover the history of Fordlândia, the abandoned multimillionaire mega-project that wears the name of one of the most curious industrialists of history.

   The year was 1896 when two of the most prominent geniuses of the industrial world met in Brooklyn's pleasant Oriental Hotel. One of them was the veteran Thomas Edison, inventor of the incandescent light bulb; and the other was the young Henry Ford, who came up with the idea of mass production. Both geniuses became good buddies and supported each other's work, as a matter of fact, they would even work together in the 1920s on an innovative project called "Detroit of the South". They wanted to create an industrial hub through the banks of the Tennessee River, in northwestern Alabama, using the hydroelectric power produced in the Wilson Dam to provide the necessary energy for industrial activity. Yet, the lack of investors vanished any hope of future. Thomas Edison, already an elderly man, spent the rest of his live experimenting in his massive laboratory complex in New Jersey, while Ford attempted for a second time the construction of a factory city. This time, the chosen place was the Brazilian jungle and the purpose was rubber.

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison at Edison's 80th birthday (Wikimedia)

   Rubber is a latex that protects Amazonian trees from the disturbing mosquito pests. It is originally from South-Central America and its first human use was already given to it since times immemorial, when the Mayas used it as the material for the ball for Pok-ta-pok, the first recorded ballsport similar to modern football (It isn't very much alike, though: to start with, you couldn't touch the ball with the feet; the goal was just a stone ring that hung from the wall and sometimes the losing team was sacrificed). Later, a British engineer named Edward Nairne accidentally discovered rubber's virtue for erasers, and thus it remained so until the present. But the main stage of rubber's history comes a century later thanks to a famous merchant by the name of Charles Goodyear.

   This guy would find out, again by accident, that rubber is an extremely resistant material that can withstand the hottest and the coldest temperatures. This quality would soon be noticed in industry: tires, shoes, tubes, toys, rain jackets and much more was made of this material. The "Rubber Boom" had just started: Western World Powers would enslave and treat poorly the indigenous tribes just to harvest rubber, remote Amazonian cities such as Manaus would grow sensationally into culture hubs with worldwide famous theaters and many million residents, while double-chinned industrialists would gain an enormous revenue. To put it simple, the Amazon became a big multinational factory; and it is precisely here when Fordlândia comes into play.

A zoomed-in map of Fordlândia. The different coloring indicates the level of rubber productivity. You can also spot the "American Village", the "Hospital" or the "Docks" (uncropped file from Wikimedia) 

   In a poor rural area of Brazil, halfway between Belem and Manaus, Henry Ford commenced building a township whose function was to yield rubber to ship back into Ford's factories in the USA where it would be processed until forming tires. A second objective was also to challenge the British monopoly on cheap Sri Lankan rubber, hence the approval of the local government that hoped it would boost the economy... At least it even seemed so at first sight: Fordlândia successfully developed a power plant, a modern hospital, a public library, a primary school, a little golf course, some sawmills, multiple restaurants and numerous tailor shops, while the salaries of the workers doubled those in other plantations, attracting a big quantity of them. But Fordlândia wasn't an ordinary city, it had a big defect: Henry Ford had the dream of building an all-American utopia with a potentially overwhelming "American lifestyle". And precisely this American dream would be one of the two reasons of the town's decay...

The hospital. Before and after (Flickr and Wikimedia)

     Elegant Ford cars of the latest model passed through the streets lined by quintessential American white clapboard houses; restaurants only served apple pies, icebox cakes and homemade hamburgers; the events on weekends were limited to English language dances and sing-alongs performed on an American-fashioned dance hall; the two neighborhoods the city was divided in, housed workers according to nationality; and to top it off, Ford even put his own brief Alcohol prohibition era, such as the one mainland USA was experiencing at the moment. Brazilian workers were simply disturbed by all this "American lifestyle" nonsense. Although in 1930 (two years after the birth of Fordlândia), the situation would slack: a local mason led a revolt from the cafeteria where he was having breakfast, and soon the rest of the workers would join him and literally chase away Ford's staff, who escaped on a ship.

Workers dancing with their wives in the public dance hall (Flickr)

   Once Henry Ford heard the news, he successfully restructured Fordlândia, yet, it only endured three more years until the ultimate decay. Albeit this time, the reason was quite different: it was the lack of rubber that put the borough's legacy into an end. And the main mistake here was that Ford felt no need for hiring a botanist, as he trusted his managers. These, evidently, didn't know much of plants, so once they had torn down all the rubber trees on the first one-and-a-half years, they replanted them wrongly: instead of placing the seeds dispersed on a vast territory as the rubber trees are naturally grown, they ordered them in rows one next to another such as wheat or corn is usually placed. The result were little saplings that never actually turned into a proper tree; thus an unproductive rubber industry, satisfied Brits that continued to exploit Sri Lankan rubber, disappointed local authorities and a bitter Henry Ford who retried the project downriver, without success either. From that moment on, the American dream had dissolved into thin air. Henry Ford died without witnessing a successful city project, which proves that even the greatest minds of history can't achieve everything. The ghost town is nowadays under heritage preservation after the Brazilian courts ruled in favor of it in May 2026, a century after the last Ford car drove through the linear streets of Fordlândia.

These guys can wait as long as they want: the saplings won't grow (Flickr)

Further Reading:

Bhopal: Where The World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster Took Place

Yungas Road: World's Most Dangerous Route

Sources and Picture Credits:

Sources: The Guardian, BYU Design Review, The Independent, Site Selection Magazine , Research Gate, DamnInteresting, Fortnightly

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Picture 1: Wikimedia user Amit Evron

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Picture 4.2: Wikimedia user Rodrigo Cruzatti

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

Picture 4.1, 5 and 6: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thehenryford/ (The Henry Ford)