2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
Old vehicles and equipment are stored in the old workshops of Fordlandia, abandoned by the American's in the 1930's after Henry Ford's rubber plantation project there failed.
In the 1920's Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company sought to avoid having to buy rubber from the British by establishing a plantation on the western bank of the Tapajos river in the Amazon region of Brazil. The project, located in a remote corner of the Amazon with no road access, was beset from the beginning by high costs, and failures, after successive plantings of Rubber trees on cleared forest ground were plagued by disease and fungus. Despite the challenges, a factory, warhorses, a hospital, and numerous employee quarters were built to house the nearly 5,000 workers that were brought to the site. The project was ultimately abandoned in 1934 by the Ford Motor Company at a loss of millions of dollars, having never produced a single bit of rubber for Ford. Today, the remains of Ford's project are slowly being overtaken by the rainforest once again.
2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
A statue of a man harvesting rubber stands in the main square of Fordlandia in the shadow of the towns Church. The Church was built later, as Henry Ford prohibited any outside influences, including religion, from his rubber plantation.
2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
The decaying walls of the Fordlandia Hospital, built by the Ford Motor Company, now frame an encroaching forest. The hospital was once Brazil's most advanced.
2/5/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
The small village of modern Fordlandia is home to under 2,000 people, many of whom live in the original American-built structures, many of which have been refurbished.
2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
A young resident of Fordlandia paused on his bike near the workshops and warehouses that were the center of Ford's project in Fordlandia.
2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
Old gravestones from the Ford era, tipped over after years of erosion, lay on the ground in the Fordlandia cemetery. The Fordlandia project from the beginning, was beset by deaths from disease, and snake bites.
2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
Trees grew among old equipment in the abandoned workshops of Fordlandia.
2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
Eduardo “Duca” Silva dos Santos, 66, photographed outside his home which is just by the decaying Fordlandia hospital, where he was born.
2/5/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
An American-built bungalow that once housed Ford Executives is now inhabited by a local vegetable farmer, in Fordlandia, Brazil.
2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
Original wood floors and furniture adorn the old American Club in the American Village section of Fordlandia. The American-style home, built in the 1920's by Ford Motor Company, is currently occupied by Eliseu Nogueira, 71.
2/6/2017 Fordlandia, Brazil
Passengers waiting for a riverboat looked out on the American-built water pumping station.