When he built this very American museum, Henry Ford had a particular objective in mind. He wanted to create one that would contain artifacts not usually found in museums and use them to show how profoundly and how rapidly life in America changed because of the technological innovations of a few people. "When we are through," he said, "we shall have reproduced American life as lived; and...a better and truer impression can be gained than could be had in a month of reading."
The result of Ford's effort is a lively, enthralling, edifying, three-dimensional encyclopedic presentation of the American experience, a museum that is considered one of the finest in the world.
(The Indoor Museum)
With the help of knowledgeable interpreters - or strictly on your own, if you prefer - you can tract the changes technology brought through the everyday tools and implements Americans used.
You'll see plows, for example, from the crude early wooden variety to the stronger cast-iron models right on up to the modern tractor plow. You'll see washing appliances, from a simple wooden clothes pounder to an 1850 hand-cranked model to the electric labor savers of the 1950's. You'll see forms of transportation, from canoe and Conestoga wagons, to cars, trains, and aircraft.
Looking at these things and hundreds of thousands more, you'll find that the past has lost it's mystery and you can more easily relate the life of yesterday to the world of today.
(The Outdoor Museum)
Here, on it's own 240 green acres, American history comes to life in many restored and appropriately furnished buildings.
In 18th-century homes, you see how life centered around the hearth, implements were hand-crafted, food was grown in the garden, clothes were homemade.
Next door, in a late-19th-century home, you see the effects of the Industrial Revolution: the cast-iron stove that replaced the fireplace; the mass-produced furniture; the kerosene lamp, then gas, then incandescent lighting devices that replaced the candle.
You'll enter the homes and work places of famous Americans; watch craftsmen use traditional techniques to blow glass, make pottery, forge tools; see how the development of the steam engine led to the creation of mass-produced goods.
In a single day, in short, Greenfield Village lets you travel back in time and return to the 20th century with a brand-new understanding of the progress of a nation.
The Beginning of the Tour
|- OR -|