Fordlandia: Henry Ford’s Failed Amazon City

In the 1920s, Henry Ford‘s factories, company towns, and cars transformed the way Americans lived and worked. So he set out to create a utopian American city, Fordlandia, in the middle of the Amazon forest.

Soon disease, mud, worker riots, and disastrous mismanagement of the rubber trees turned Ford’s dream into a $2 Million ($400 Million today) failure.

This video tells the story of Ford’s impact on the Amazon rainforest, what ultimately spelled the end, and what life is like in Fordlandia today.