The Ford Rouge complex, later the largest factory in the world, began as a shipyard for a war Henry Ford had publicly opposed. In January 1918 the Navy, its yards full, asked Ford to mass-produce a steel anti-submarine patrol ship, the 200-foot Eagle boat. Highland Park was landlocked, but Ford owned land near the mouth of the Rouge River, bought in 1915, and dredging gave it a way to the Detroit River. Work on the B Building began in February 1918 and keels were being laid by May: 1,700 feet long and 350 wide, with thirteen acres under one roof and three lines that could hold as many as 21 hulls. Ford insisted that all the plates be flat so that they could be stamped out in quantity. The first boat was launched on 11 July 1918, lowered into the slip on a movable steel trestle. The contract promised 25 boats a month by autumn, and Ford fell well short of that. The order was eventually cut to 60, the last were commissioned in October 1919, and none saw action in the war. The building was the real result. Ford bought it from the government after the war, and it became the seed of the Rouge. Later known as Dearborn Assembly, it built Mustangs from 1964 until May 2004, and most of it had been demolished by about 2008.
Getting there
42.3050, -83.1650
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