At Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s rubber town in the Brazilian Amazon, alcohol was banned, the diet was meat-free and workers were encouraged to take up line dancing, according to American Heritage. Some workers also felt pressured to attend poetry readings and English-only singing lessons.
Ford wanted his own supply of rubber for tires, and he said the project was about more than money. “We are not going to South America to make money but to help develop that wonderful and fertile land,” he said in 1928, per American Heritage. He received a free land concession of about 2.5 million acres along the Tapajós River in 1927, and the first ships with supplies left in August 1928, according to cultural institution The Henry Ford.
The rubber trees did not cooperate. Heavy rains washed away the nutrient-rich soil. Drought, leaf fungus, and pests damaged the plantings, The Henry Ford said. Workers who were used to avoiding the hottest hours of the day were expected to keep a nine-to-five schedule, and a riot broke out in which they vandalized the time clocks and damaged equipment, American Heritage reported. Administrators left by boat until the Brazilian military restored order.
Ford moved most operations to a second plantation, Belterra, about 80 miles downriver in 1933, per All That’s Interesting. Commercial tapping there began in 1942 and produced 750 tons of latex, against a need of 38,000 tons per year, The Henry Ford said.
Ford gave up its Amazon rubber holdings in 1945, selling them to the Brazilian government for $250,000, according to The Henry Ford. By then, the total investment had been $20 million.
Today, Fordlandia is largely abandoned. About 2,000 people still live there, a fraction of the 10,000 the town was built to house. The hospital was destroyed in a 2012 fire, per Al Jazeera. Local historian Luiz Magno Ribeiro told the outlet, “Ford disrespected the laws of nature. But nature is sovereign – nobody beats nature.”
A Brazilian court recently ordered local and federal governments to help restore and preserve the site, Jalopnik reported in June 2026. They must create a recovery plan and carry it out or face fines. Fordlandia is not yet an official heritage site, according to Jalopnik.
Ford’s name turned up on another big landmark project closer to home. In 2018, Ford paid $90 million for Detroit’s Michigan Central Station, and restoring it and its campus cost nearly $950 million.
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