In 1928, Henry Ford bought a slice of rainforest the size of Connecticut and tried to grow rubber — and a wholesome Michigan town — deep in the Brazilian jungle. He built cottages, fire hydrants, and a golf course, banned alcohol, and mandated square dancing. The jungle, the blight, and the workers had other plans.
NPR's interview with historian Greg Grandin lays out the whole audacious premise: a car magnate deciding he could out-engineer the Amazon itself.
The complete rise and fall: 6 million acres bought in 1928, the riot of 1930, and the 1945 sell-off at a loss worth hundreds of millions today. Not one usable tire ever came of it.
A tight visual telling of why a man who mastered the assembly line assumed a rainforest would fall in line too — and how catastrophically wrong that was.
Cape Cod cottages, mandatory poetry readings, nametags, and hamburgers in the jungle — the surreal cultural collision that turned workers against management.
The 1930 workers' revolt, when Brazilian laborers smashed the cafeteria and chased managers into the forest over cafeteria-style dining and Prohibition-in-the-jungle rules.
The agricultural death spiral: rubber trees planted without a botanist, packed too close, then wiped out by leaf blight and caterpillars that biodiversity would have kept in check.
What's left today — a decaying water tower, an empty hospital, and rusting American machinery slowly being reclaimed by the forest it tried to conquer.