American Road Marketing and Publicity Photographs Series

A set of photographs called American Road that was created primarily as a resource to help staff of the Ford Motor Company Archives answer requests for historical photographs that fell under the heading "something about roads."

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Biographical / Historical Note

Archivists at Ford Motor Company Archives received numbers of requests for images relating to the history of the Ford Motor Company and the history of the automobile in general. This sometimes led to the creation of artificial (rather than archival) collections. An example is a set of photographs called American Road that was created primarily as a resource to help staff answer requests for historical photographs that fell under the heading "something about roads." As a compilation, it was intended to cover the general and often vague needs for illustrations depicting Ford Motor Company's place in the development of transportation and travel in America.

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Scope and Content Note

Although entitled American Road, the series is comprised primarily of visual documentation of Ford vehicles in the early 1900s, with additional, although fewer, images into the 1960s. In addition, a number of folders include images of transportation modes before the automobile became prominent. The series is arranged alphabetically by subject. Topics include early roads, road construction, driving conditions, bridges, various utilizations of the Model T, women drivers, railroads, cityscapes, streetscapes, landscapes, and an occasional portrait. Most of the images, but not all, remain in the original format (prints and/or negatives) in various photograph collections held by The Henry Ford. Researchers should note that some images that were originally part of this series were integrated into the Photographic Prints Vertical File, Accession 1660, under the subject term Automobiles, Contemporary.

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Collection Details

Object ID: 64.167.1859.0
Creator: Ford Motor Company. Archives
Inclusive Dates: 1903-1964
Size: 1.2 cubic ft. (3 boxes)
Language: English

Collection Access & Use

Item Location: Not Currently On Exhibit

Access Restrictions: The series is open for research. Access to negatives requires permission of curator.

Credit: From the Collections of The Henry Ford. Gift of Ford Motor Company.

Keywords

Photographs

Aerial photographs

Landscapes (Representations)

Bridges (Built works)

Ferries

Ford automobile

Ford Model T automobile

Women automobile drivers

Automobile driving on mountain roads

Automobile driving in bad weather

Cityscapes

Streetscapes

Cars

Ford, Henry, 1863-1947

Digitized Artifacts From This Collection

In many cases, not all artifacts have been digitized.
Contact us for more information about this collection.

Camel Pack Train Crossing a Stream on a Stone Road, circa 1934

Camel Pack Train Crossing a Stream on a Stone Road, circa 1934 (back)

Camel Pack Train Crossing a Stream on a Stone Road, 1934

Details

Camel Pack Train Crossing a Stream on a Stone Road, 1934

View in our Collectionson thehenryford.org

Artifact

Photographic print

Summary

"Roads of the World" was part of the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn, Michigan. Visitors rode new Ford vehicles through reproductions of famous roadways from around the world. Ford spent $176,000 landscaping the attraction into historic and modern sections. To ensure a realistic, immersive experience, crews used reference photographs--like this one--to recreate the 19 "Roads of the World."

Creators

Unknown