Jackie Sheckler Finch - Michigan Off the Beaten Path®: Discover Your Fun

Until the 1870s, Detroit was a commercial center for farmers, but at the end of that century the first automobiles appeared, as Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford began tinkering with horseless carriages. By 1903, Ford had organized the Ford Motor Company, and when he pioneered the assembly-line method of building cars and introduced the Model T, the vehicle for the common man, Detroits place as the automobile capital of the world was established.

Cars are a way of life in Detroit. Michigan boasts of having the first mile of concrete rural highway (1909), the first traffic light (1915), and the first urban freeway free of those annoying stoplights (1942). The best-known place to view this history of cars and their immense effect on the American way of life is The Henry Ford, home of Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum (3139826001 or 8008355237; thehenryford.org), a 260-acre complex with 100 historic buildings in Dearborn that has become the nations largest indoor and outdoor museum.

A $200 million upgrade of Greenfield Village in 2004 resulted in Americas Greatest Historical Attraction being extensively redesigned and for the first time open from mid-April through New Years Eve. Now the streets of the turn-of-the-20th-century village are lined with 331 lampposts, while such famous buildings as Thomas Edisons laboratory from Menlo Park, New Jersey; the Wright Brothers Ohio cycle workshop; and the Logan County Courthouse where Abraham Lincoln first practiced law are heated for visitors who arrive outside the summer months. The adjacent Henry Ford Museum also features new exhibits, including the bus where in 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, thus igniting Americas civil rights movement.

So much history, so little time to absorb it all. Keep in mind that the village and the museum are each a separate attraction with a separate admission price, and each requires a good part of a day to view. Car buffs are fascinated by the Henry Ford Museum, especially its main attraction, the Automobile in American Life, an ode to the motorcar culture that is the social history of 20th-century America. Families and children love Greenfield Village.

Henry Ford Museum Home of Priceless American Memorabilia

A glass vial with the dying breath of famed inventor Thomas Edison.

The maroon chair, still bloodstained, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Fords Theatre.

A folding camp bed that General George Washington actually slept in during the Revolutionary War.

Henry Ford was a collector. As one of the worlds first billionaires, Ford had the money to collect whatever struck his fancy. Instead of expensive works of art or precious gems, however, Ford liked to save pieces of everyday life from the past.

A quote from Ford explains why he was so interested in his unusual collection:

When I went to our American history books to learn how our forefathers harrowed the land, I discovered that the historians knew nothing about harrows, Ford says. Yet our country has depended more on harrows than on guns or speeches. I thought that a history which excluded harrows and all the rest of daily life is bunk and I think so yet.

Born July 30, 1863, in Dearborn, Henry Ford was the oldest of six children of first-generation Irish farmers, William and Mary Ford. Not rich, but far from poor, the Fords had a secure homelife. By all rights, Henry probably should have become a farmer. But at 16 and against the wishes of his father, Ford left the farm for Detroit, where he found work as a mechanics apprentice.

Ford advanced steadily and became chief engineer at the Edison Illuminating Co. At 24, Ford married Clara Bryant, a friend of his sisters. He called his wife The Believer because she encouraged his plans to build a horseless carriage from their earliest days together.

In his spare time, Ford tinkered with creating that motorized vehicle. Part of his legacy is that Ford created a mass-produced automobile that was affordable for many common folks. He may have contributed more than any other individualbesides his friend and mentor Thomas Edisonto the reality of the modern world.

Ford also developed an obsessive collection of historical memorabilia and commonplace items like toasters, farm machinery, kerosene lamps, and steam engines. In 1919, the city of Dearborn decided to widen a number of streets. Fords beloved boyhood home stood directly in the path of development. It seemed ironic that the house was about to be destroyed due to the rush of traffic that Ford helped create.

But Ford found an ideal solution. He moved the entire house and it became the beginning of his Greenfield Village that today contains nearly 100 structures. By 1920, Ford had decided to start a museum that would emphasize industrial history and thereby give people a true picture of the development of the country.

The best way to create this picture, Ford decided, was to have two parts. An exhibit hall would display inventions and artifacts that recorded mans technological and cultural progress. An adjacent outdoor village of residential, commercial, and industrial architecture would show how those objects were made and used.

He named the entire complex The Edison Institute, in honor of the man who encouraged Ford when he was developing his automobile and who embodied, the carmaker believed, practical genius.