[milwaukee-electric] Re: Name of the Milwaukee Train Station During 1969

[Gary Schnabl]

On 3/17/2011 1:44 PM, Don Ross wrote:
> I remember the airport on the north side which I think was at
> Hopkins.  Dad took me to see the new huge airplane.  It was a Ford
> Tri-motor.  I don't think was really new since there were Douglas
> DC-1 in 1933 and the Fords were built in 1927 and later.
> I was pretty young at the time and I wasn't doing History stuff yet.
> Don
Henry Ford built the first US airport, which today is one of Ford's 
proving grounds in Dearborn near some of Ford's component operations 
near Greenfield Village that eventually were spun off in 2000. It had a 
restaurant and a hotel, I think. It was built around 1935 on Airport 
Drive, now called Rotunda Drive, where the Ford Rotunda was later built. 
The Rotunda itself burned to the ground when some roofers set the place 
afire when their asphalt caught fire on the roof in 1962.

Henry Ford also started his own AM radio station during the 1920s and 
owned two railroads that serviced Ford's plants. One was partially 
electrified--the Detroit Toledo and Ironton. During 1929, 129,000 
employees worked at the Dearborn Ford Rouge Plant, one mile west of my 
home here in SW Detroit. They made just about everything: coke from 
coal, steam and electricity from water from the waste heat, iron from 
ore, cement from the slag, steel for the cars, and farm tractors, 
Eagle-class subchasers, cars starting with the 1928 Model A, etc. My 
maternal grandfather worked his entire career there.

Before Ford started Ford--his third company--he started Cadillac a 
couple years earlier. Before that, he was the chief engineer at Detroit 
Edison and built the most popular racing-car engines during the 1890s. 
Ford never met Tom Edison until late in his career, but they became 
big-time buddies, along with the Firestone family after WWI..

-- 

Gary Schnabl
Southwest Detroit, two miles NORTH! of Canada--Windsor, that is...

Technical Editor forum <http://TechnicalEditor.LivernoisYard.com/phpBB3/>