A Short History of the Ford Plant: Industrial Archaeology and Economic Change in St. Paul
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Published in 2013.
Book description: The most famous man in the world arrived in St. Paul on a brisk spring day in 1923 to explore his new acquisition, a 167-acre site on a beautiful bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, complete with its own hydroelectric power plant. Henry Ford, known far and wide for his success with mass production, for providing affordable cars to workers, and for paying workers enough to buy the cars they made, was planning to build a new plant. This is the story of the Twin Cities Assembly Plant, which operated from 1925 to 2011 in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul. Working with machinery driven by hydro and steam power, fabricating windshields with sand mined from tunnels beneath the plant itself, the plant’s workers produced Model Ts and Model As, Fairlanes and Ranger trucks. They weathered enormous changes in labor relations, management practices, and plant expansions and renovations. And they built vehicles that drove the nation.
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