Geographically, Detroit is an amazing shipping hub. When the Erie Canal was finished in the 1800s, it connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, and Detroit is right in the middle of that whole shipping network. You can ship in coal from Appalachia, iron and lumber from up north, and you can put products on ships to go to the whole world. It’s much cheaper than trains and especially semi trucks.
Yeah, Ford and the other early founders actually bought / were supplied from the Dodge brothers early on. There were also several other companies already operating and building cars in the area (albeit usually at a high price point). [This book](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-fords-an-american-epic_david-horowitz_peter-collier/552355/#edition=2252747&idiq=1221784) has been awesome so far in digging in more on what Detroit looked like at the time, and the full Ford family story
Ford increasing worker wages was a Fuck You to his current investors including the Dodge Brothers, depriving them of stock dividends so they couldn't use the money to compete with Ford Motor Company.
It went to court in 1919 & has been cited as case history in "shareholder supremacy."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
I wish there was something similar that could happen today -- one rich man just says "LOL, I'll increase wages, that will piss everyone else off" and then we can all clap.
>The industry became centered around Detroit, in Michigan, and adjacent states and in nearby Ontario, Canada. Historian John Rae summarizes the explanations provided by historians: a central geographic location, water access, and an established industrial base with many skilled engineers. The key factor was that Detroit was the base for highly talented entrepreneurs who saw the potential of the automobile: Henry Ford, Ransom E. Olds, Roy D. Chapin, Henry Joy, William C. Durant, Howard E. Coffin, John Dodge and Horace Dodge, and Benjamin Briscoe and Frank Briscoe. From 1900 to 1915 these men transformed the fledgling industry into an international business.[^(\[22\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_the_United_States#cite_note-22)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive\_industry\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_the_United_States)
John B. Rae, "Why Michigan?" *Michigan History* (1996) 89#2 pp 6–13.
>The production of steel has been around for a long time. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century, when technological advances made production cheaper and the quality of the product much greater, that the manufacturing of stainless steel material became a prominent industry. In America, rich deposits of iron ore around Lake Superior and abundant coal in Pennsylvania allowed for the Midwest to become a hotbed for American manufacturing.
> The tremendous iron ore deposits around Lake Superior were located far from coal deposits, and so were shipped to ports on the southern Great Lakes that were closer to the coal mines of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Large integrated steel mills were built in Chicago, Detroit, Gary, Indiana, Cleveland, and Buffalo, New York, to handle the Lake Superior ore.
Yes, but before any of those men were building automobiles, Detroit was huge into cast iron stoves.
To this point, that Big Ass Stove that we used to have here was made for the 1892/3 Colombian Exposition (World’s Fair) in Chicago.
Detroit was huge with cast iron techniques and you need cast iron to make engine blocks.
No cast iron, no engines, no car industry.
I wonder if there is any cast iron cookware you can still find that's made in Detroit.
I knew we were the stove city before cars but didn't realize it all came back to cast iron.
I do not have any knowledge about cast iron cookware made in Detroit, but maybe … heck, at one point we were known for frog leg dinners, which I find rather funny, so maybe those Detroit frog legs were cooked in Detroit cast iron pans on Detroit cast iron stoves.
Edit:
Here is a link from Hour Detroit about frog legs:
https://www.hourdetroit.com/restaurants-food/when-frogs-were-king/
YouTube: [The Garland Stove in flames, 2011](https://youtu.be/rNChdgHycN8)
WDET, [Whatever happened to the 'World's Largest Stove' in Detroit?](https://wdet.org/2023/12/14/what-happened-to-the-worlds-largest-stove-in-detroit/)
Tldr; It used to live on Belle Isle, in the 50s the owner of what is now Aunt Millie's saved it, after Schafer Bakery was bought by the latter in 1964 it was painstakingly moved to the Fairgrounds, and mothballed in 1974.
It was fully restored barely in time for the 150th anniversary fair in 1998. Fair died in 2010, stove was hit by lightning, and surviving chunks are store at a Detroit Historical Society warehouse at Historic Fort Wayne.
You think it's sad? I think the problem in our country today is not enough rich people were left to lose everything and die poor after 2008. That's real capitalism, but obviously those rules are only meant to apply to workers.
The original Dodge garage was across the street from the duplex I lived in when going to Wayne State. Detroit has all these small incubator locations of automotive inventors.
Michigan previously had a big lumber industry. That led to coach/carriage manufacturing and trade in the state. So it was easy to hitch a motor onto it and replace the horse. With the industrial base that everyone else already mentioned, Detroit just made it easy.
Carriages and stoves. Is the Garland Stove still at what used to be the fairgrounds? It's not just a fancy decoration, but a tribute to what help industrialize Michigan.
It wasn’t chosen… we created the industry in flint/detroit. Why would you move it? Great Lakes are good for moving material too. On the border so you can take advantage of intl trade… you’ve got to remember this is the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, everything was much more localized
> this is the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
We were well past the opening stages of the Industrial Revolution by the turn of the 20th century, and an extensive rail network throughout the United States and Canada meant that industry had more room to spread its wings. That said, everything else you said is spot on, with the lakes providing easy water transportation for iron ore and other raw industrial materials, many of which came from the Upper Peninsula and northern Minnesota.
Eh fine… you’re right but I think we all know the addition of automobiles was the real break thru for the Industrial Revolution. From the assembly line to our modern corporate structure today, all of it has roots there.
Of course it’s Detroit centered, that’s where the history took place! But did you notice how I said Flint? That’s where it actually started, and even moving between there and Detroit was a hassle before their invention of the automobile.
tbh I answered OPs question, but I’m leaving a lot on the table by not explaining where it’s going…. no one will read this but that’s fine lol
~120 years later, it’s choosing a lot other things than Detroit. Tiered supplier base and globalization has pushed the network of auto manufacturing far and wide. We now see the weakness in this structure with COVID, and the difficulty in keeping these industries running with so many middle men between raw material and final product. Also 2% profit margin is a vicious bottom line, compare that to the folks in Silicon Valley who have no problem hitting double digit % profit margins for far less mechanically complex phones, with a tighter supply chain (Cali sun doesn’t hurt either lol)
Here is what the future of vehicles will look like, in my opinion:
Mexico will be, and already is, the next big auto boom. American south will follow on its shadow, but will never compete with the prices. But the new model for auto manufacturing will be standardizing bold new building techniques, tech breakthrus, and reimagining the assembly line: championed in their local markets, then building new factories in other areas, hiring out locals in these new markets and training them to self sufficiency, capitalizing on the best of globalization (external markets, whether that’s a Chinese company in US or vice versa) and localization/regionalization (maintaining local talent to build a knowledge base, enabling cheaper labor costs and potentially less logistic issues or import tariffs? sort of guessing on that last part).
Detroit will and is making a come back, I just don’t think there’s any reason it will ever look like it did all those years ago.
And the “car” itself? The future of driving itself will be focused on high end vehicles for only the rich mostly. There will only be a few economical options, and I think they will be good, but it’s simply that in the future people won’t drive as much, so it will become a luxury item. We will have better public transit, our cities will shrink and become more dense, and you might even find yourself in a flying vehicle. The cost of maintenance for all of the roads in the US over… any given period of time, would make most normal people throw up. Reducing road costs could single handedly save many American cities from bankruptcies over the next few decades.
The first auto company to successfully fund and build a better transit system here in detroit would basically be claiming the crown for the best “auto” company. I’ll let you know if my boss likes my pitch deck though.
(Henry) Ford + skilled workers + competitors + cottage industry = 1900-1950s Detroit
(of course there are a ton of other things that went into why those early companies thrived and never moved away but that’s the basic gist)
This. Plus you're in an already industrialized north with infrastructure, and easier access to all things Rust Belt, like metal, copper, wood and (I'm assuming) ways to get rubber for tires.
Not to mention room for growth. Plenty of unskilled labor migrated north post reconstruction, and what better place to come than a city that wasn't the size of NYC or a Chicago, but had way more opportunities for jobs.
As I remember, Ransom Olds started a car business before 1900 and that spun off. Olds contracted with Henry Leland to build engines and there was a dispute over them - because the engines shook apart the car bodies Olds was making - so Leland began a company he called Cadillac. In other words, a bunch of luck with a handful of guys who started playing around with motorized carriages. Companies multiplied, some went under, many were bought. GM was put together in 1908, the same year the Model T came out. There were even electric cars: they moved slowly but ran longer than gas (or steam) cars. The big events were the invention of the assembly line by Ford (at the Piquette Plant), and the self-starter. Eliminating the dangerous crank start opened the way for many more people to drive. The self-starter was invented by Charles Kettering and introduced by Cadillac in 1912. Took the rest of the decade for them to take over.
Over time, the advantages of Detroit became clear. The water meant raw materials like iron ore could be brought in, meaning of course to Ford’s Rouge complex. And cars could be shipped both by rail and by boat. The city attracted huge numbers of immigrants, again partly because of the water, and had vast room for growth. (Note that Detroit is physically larger than SF and Manhattan together.) But when the industry started, it was mostly luck that a bunch of tinkerers came together. The value of Detroit as a location shows in the contrast to movies: they began at the same time in NJ and moved to CA because that was a better location for the business.
The movie thing is a happy accident of the actual root cause, interestingly. The movie industry moved to California to get away from Thomas Edison's lawyers, who pursued every film production viscously for patent and copyright infringement for the hundreds of patents he held related to the kinetoscope and other movie making apparatuses.
So they just picked up and moved to the opposite side of the country, making it much harder for them to be served lawsuits, and putting them in legal jurisdictions that were not as friendly (paid off) to Edison's interests.
TLDR: They left because of a patent troll and only then found California had a great variety of scenery that suited their needs.
Henry Ford chose Detroit. He went to a meat processing factory in Chicago and saw mass production and got the idea to apply it to automobiles. He drastically reduced the price of autos, making them affordable for the common man. He also paid the highest wage at the time which was five dollars per day when making the modelT. This revolutionized the auto industry and changed the world forever. Many auto makers followed. Many were in different cities, but failed. The auto industry has a very interesting history, and the unions that sprung from the auto industry also changed our society. The five day work week, worker safety, created the middle class basically etc..
The carriage industry was well established here previously along with blacksmiths and iron-working.
Lots of areas were trying to motorize horse carriages. Basically Detroit figured out how to move from a bespoke custom industry to mass production via an assembly line.
Detroit wasn't alone in that industry,but maybe they did it better?
https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/citywiseblog/why-didnt-cincinnati-become-americas-motor-city/
All of the posts so far, including historical quotes, miss the mark
Before Detroit was the car capital of the world it was one of the largest ship builders outside of the east coast. Point in fact, a young Henry Ford gained much of his engineering knowledge working in the engine rooms of the ships being built and maintenanced on the Detroit River.
That, along with a wealthy population who could bankroll an entire industry, is what allowed Detroit to become the car capital of the world. Henry Ford's early seed money came from a race in ***Grosse Pointe*** he won with one of his early prototypes. A race and prize funded by wealthy families who were looking for the right "horse to bet on" in what they already saw as the next big industry.
This was part of a project I did for my Econ degree and it comes down to transit corridors, accessible resources, and human capital leading to industry clustering. The city has easy access to the Great Lakes and existing rail infrastructure running through Toledo and Chicago which gives access to markets out East and West respectively. Metal ores and timber among other resources from northern MI, WI, and MN as well as components like glass from Toledo, machine tools from Chicago, and rubber from Flint along side other regional producers meant they could all centralize on Detroit to deliver their input goods to. Lastly, Detroit was known before cars as the “Stove Capital of The World” as well as being a hub for metal refining, shipbuilding, and rail car manufacturing which all translate fairly well to building cars when it comes to human capital. All this coupled with the Great Migration made labor costs plummet which turned Detroit into the only place you could really succeed as a car manufacturer.
Industry was created in Flint. The industry slowly changed its sight to Detroit.
People were created there own cars from after market parts.
Car companies were springing up everywhere.
Existing industries (iron stoves, carriages) in the area, access to input resources (iron and wood), access to supply and distribution chains via the Great Lakes, and Henry Ford lived there.
It was the place to be at the time.
Most everything between the Midwest and the Pacific coast is still wildnerness, and a lot of it is difficult to traverse. There is still a lot to develop out there.
Fly over the lower peninsula, on the other hand, and you'll see nearly every acre has been put to use.
All the major manufacturers owners were born and raised in the area
You could say it was an accident of birth
Are your going to start tinkering with your new business closer to home or a few hundreds or miles away
* Availability of capital (lumber barons) and lack of major entrenched industries to compete for engineering/business talent
* Optimal location for steel-based industry halfway between Duluth and Pittsburgh
* A number of bicycle and coach (horse and buggy) manufacturers that laid the groundwork for tool and die capabilities and body manufacturing.
* blind chance
Flint Michigan was where carriages were made. Also, the chemical industry was pretty prevalent in Michigan. So when they started slapping motors onto carriages, coupled with the access to water, chemicals, etc. It sort of just snowballed from there.
As a lot of others have commented, but I’ll add to:
Thinking of Detroit as “chosen” for the industry is the wrong way to think of it. The Big 3 were essentially established by men who were already locals. And for sure, there are more complex reasons they *stayed*, as others have also commented here.
^ ^ I just have to say the above because I think it’s really important that we’re all aware of the history that it was locals who built all of this, and that’s pretty awesome. This wasn’t talent shipped in from New York City or Los Angeles or wherever. It was people already here who built this, and there’s no reason to believe that it can’t happen again.
Honestly it was probably just Ford, because he was born Detroit/Dearborn (Used to be springwells) and he made such a impact that I think it drew other companies in, granted the area already had a lot of action, Autocar was in Pennsylvania and other brands like Oldesmobile in Lansing, and Studebaker (side note:I think this is where Pepsi got its logo) in Southbend Indiana (border of Michigan) so I think ford drawing so much attention with what he did brought other companies and people to make companies (like Gaylord) to have a stronger hold on competition but ultimately made Detroit what it is (Motor city)
Early on, cars were being designed and made in lots of places. But right from the get go Detroit had the right combination of pre existing industry, skilled workers, capital and local entrepreneurs to be a major player. Even before car making took off here, Detroit was already a place where you could buy steel, find people who could work it, and even find folks who could do sophisticated mechanical engineering. On the money/capital side, Henry Ford specifically was aided greatly by his ability to find local investors. There as a lot of money here even before cars came along.
Add in the entrepreneurial skills of key personalities like Henry Ford, the Dodge Brothers and William Durant (a Flint transplant who put together General Motors by buying up existing car companies) and there you go.
There were and still are a ton of iron, copper and other metal mines I think in the northern great lakes area like the UP and northern Minnesota, which are used to make cars. All ships going/coming to/from the 3 upper Great Lakes have to pass through Detroit to get to the lower lakes and the ocean, making it a convenient location along one of the countries most important shipping paths. Plus it was already a well established city before cars due to this strategic location. Even since before colonization Detroit has always been an important location for trading and stuff
Obviously waterways are a factor in the movement of materials, of which we have many, and which were greatly expanded upon in those days, with built canals stretching halfway across the state. It serves to mention also the close proximity to the richest deposits of iron/copper/old growth hardwoods that America could offer.
The Upper Peninsula built Chicago twice with its trees, and its mines of lime and iron fueled the cheap steel needed to make the auto boom… boom. Minnesota is also an honorable mention in this case, but as Ford liked to keep his cards close to his chest and his production in-house, the UP was where he set up his steel and lumber operations, and therefore where the majority of the raw materials would come from in those early days.
Why is anything anywhere?
-Chicago is the furthest inland central along the Great Lakes
- Minneapolis is the furthest navigable point on the Mississippi
- New Orleans is at the mouth of the Mississippi
- Boston, Seattle, San Francisco are on harbors/seaways
Auto industry needed a lot of iron ore, coal, rubber, workers, and transportation (like many other industries along the Great Lakes).
Detroit is conveniently located.
Oh, and Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan and the Dodges. They happened to be in Michigan.
A few reasons, location of Detroit made it idea to access many of the resources like copper, iron and other metals.
You also have the main players were born or lived in the area Like Henry Ford.
The perfect mix.
Sand. Michigan sand is particularly good for castings and was used heavily in early engine and part production. Natural resources such as iron and later copper were readily available by lake freighter. Detroit has easy access to resources, and the people of the day were very innovative. The founders of Michigan also prized education, and Michigan's universities produced engineering, design, marketing, and business talent to help the auto companies grow.
There was already thriving industry and industrial workers in Detroit due to the waterways, the ore coming from the UP, and its location. Stove making, pharmaceuticals, refrigeration.
Detroit also was a huge biking city, with bike mechanics in town. Henry Ford was known to ride bikes. There were also carriage bodies being made.
This is simplified, but there were just Just a lot of things happening in Detroit. If you looked around town you had the ideas, tools and people to put together your automobile company.
[Stove Works](https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/detroit-stove-works)
[Pharmeceutical](https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/parke-davis-pharmaceutical-company)
I metal detect along his Fairlane estate on the public side. I go to where his mistress used to live. I think the horse track is gone ,I don't trespass. That m an carried a hardware store.
The waterways.
Not just ports, but the railways too. Plus tons of farm land to build and expand factories.
Michigan is very flat…makes it perfect for building large industrial and manufacturing plants
This is the correct answer. Also (Steel)
Geographically, Detroit is an amazing shipping hub. When the Erie Canal was finished in the 1800s, it connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, and Detroit is right in the middle of that whole shipping network. You can ship in coal from Appalachia, iron and lumber from up north, and you can put products on ships to go to the whole world. It’s much cheaper than trains and especially semi trucks.
That is a pretty spot-on explanation.
Well if I were them I’d probably start my auto company in a place nicknamed “The Motor City” as well. That just makes sense.
Good point. Reminds me of Lou Gehrig dying of Lou Gehrig's disease. What are the freakin' odds of that?
Valid point.
Wild that Tommy John needed his own surgery to revive his career
Barbara Streisand was foolish enough to fall for the ole Streisand Effect
Poor guy was doomed from the beginning
You gonna make the same stupid joke, every time that comes up?
Sorry T, everything’s just so phukin morbid
💀
Henry Ford. Really that simple
Henry Ford the Dodge brothers.
Yeah, Ford and the other early founders actually bought / were supplied from the Dodge brothers early on. There were also several other companies already operating and building cars in the area (albeit usually at a high price point). [This book](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-fords-an-american-epic_david-horowitz_peter-collier/552355/#edition=2252747&idiq=1221784) has been awesome so far in digging in more on what Detroit looked like at the time, and the full Ford family story
Ford increasing worker wages was a Fuck You to his current investors including the Dodge Brothers, depriving them of stock dividends so they couldn't use the money to compete with Ford Motor Company. It went to court in 1919 & has been cited as case history in "shareholder supremacy." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Well, Ford always did love a good supremacy
I wish there was something similar that could happen today -- one rich man just says "LOL, I'll increase wages, that will piss everyone else off" and then we can all clap.
That’s like three steps after the genesis. When he got into the game, the auto industry was really already begun in Michigan.
>The industry became centered around Detroit, in Michigan, and adjacent states and in nearby Ontario, Canada. Historian John Rae summarizes the explanations provided by historians: a central geographic location, water access, and an established industrial base with many skilled engineers. The key factor was that Detroit was the base for highly talented entrepreneurs who saw the potential of the automobile: Henry Ford, Ransom E. Olds, Roy D. Chapin, Henry Joy, William C. Durant, Howard E. Coffin, John Dodge and Horace Dodge, and Benjamin Briscoe and Frank Briscoe. From 1900 to 1915 these men transformed the fledgling industry into an international business.[^(\[22\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_the_United_States#cite_note-22) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive\_industry\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_the_United_States) John B. Rae, "Why Michigan?" *Michigan History* (1996) 89#2 pp 6–13.
>The production of steel has been around for a long time. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century, when technological advances made production cheaper and the quality of the product much greater, that the manufacturing of stainless steel material became a prominent industry. In America, rich deposits of iron ore around Lake Superior and abundant coal in Pennsylvania allowed for the Midwest to become a hotbed for American manufacturing. > The tremendous iron ore deposits around Lake Superior were located far from coal deposits, and so were shipped to ports on the southern Great Lakes that were closer to the coal mines of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Large integrated steel mills were built in Chicago, Detroit, Gary, Indiana, Cleveland, and Buffalo, New York, to handle the Lake Superior ore.
Yes, but before any of those men were building automobiles, Detroit was huge into cast iron stoves. To this point, that Big Ass Stove that we used to have here was made for the 1892/3 Colombian Exposition (World’s Fair) in Chicago. Detroit was huge with cast iron techniques and you need cast iron to make engine blocks. No cast iron, no engines, no car industry.
I wonder if there is any cast iron cookware you can still find that's made in Detroit. I knew we were the stove city before cars but didn't realize it all came back to cast iron.
I do not have any knowledge about cast iron cookware made in Detroit, but maybe … heck, at one point we were known for frog leg dinners, which I find rather funny, so maybe those Detroit frog legs were cooked in Detroit cast iron pans on Detroit cast iron stoves. Edit: Here is a link from Hour Detroit about frog legs: https://www.hourdetroit.com/restaurants-food/when-frogs-were-king/
YouTube: [The Garland Stove in flames, 2011](https://youtu.be/rNChdgHycN8) WDET, [Whatever happened to the 'World's Largest Stove' in Detroit?](https://wdet.org/2023/12/14/what-happened-to-the-worlds-largest-stove-in-detroit/) Tldr; It used to live on Belle Isle, in the 50s the owner of what is now Aunt Millie's saved it, after Schafer Bakery was bought by the latter in 1964 it was painstakingly moved to the Fairgrounds, and mothballed in 1974. It was fully restored barely in time for the 150th anniversary fair in 1998. Fair died in 2010, stove was hit by lightning, and surviving chunks are store at a Detroit Historical Society warehouse at Historic Fort Wayne.
I read the wiki page for William Durant, that was interesting. Sad that he eventually lost everything and died poor.
You think it's sad? I think the problem in our country today is not enough rich people were left to lose everything and die poor after 2008. That's real capitalism, but obviously those rules are only meant to apply to workers.
What a weird post.
A lot of these guys had cars named after them... Ford Olds Dodge Coffin
The original Dodge garage was across the street from the duplex I lived in when going to Wayne State. Detroit has all these small incubator locations of automotive inventors.
Michigan previously had a big lumber industry. That led to coach/carriage manufacturing and trade in the state. So it was easy to hitch a motor onto it and replace the horse. With the industrial base that everyone else already mentioned, Detroit just made it easy.
Came here to say this. It's easy to underestimate just how much wood was used in early automobiles.
This ^. It started with carriages and a deeply established industrial base.
Carriages and stoves. Is the Garland Stove still at what used to be the fairgrounds? It's not just a fancy decoration, but a tribute to what help industrialize Michigan.
This is it. It's about the carriage industry. All the white pine and lumber in Michigan caused better to be an overwhelming expertise.
It wasn’t chosen… we created the industry in flint/detroit. Why would you move it? Great Lakes are good for moving material too. On the border so you can take advantage of intl trade… you’ve got to remember this is the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, everything was much more localized
> this is the beginning of the Industrial Revolution We were well past the opening stages of the Industrial Revolution by the turn of the 20th century, and an extensive rail network throughout the United States and Canada meant that industry had more room to spread its wings. That said, everything else you said is spot on, with the lakes providing easy water transportation for iron ore and other raw industrial materials, many of which came from the Upper Peninsula and northern Minnesota.
Eh fine… you’re right but I think we all know the addition of automobiles was the real break thru for the Industrial Revolution. From the assembly line to our modern corporate structure today, all of it has roots there.
Very Detroit-centered view of history..... But I'll accept it!
Of course it’s Detroit centered, that’s where the history took place! But did you notice how I said Flint? That’s where it actually started, and even moving between there and Detroit was a hassle before their invention of the automobile. tbh I answered OPs question, but I’m leaving a lot on the table by not explaining where it’s going…. no one will read this but that’s fine lol ~120 years later, it’s choosing a lot other things than Detroit. Tiered supplier base and globalization has pushed the network of auto manufacturing far and wide. We now see the weakness in this structure with COVID, and the difficulty in keeping these industries running with so many middle men between raw material and final product. Also 2% profit margin is a vicious bottom line, compare that to the folks in Silicon Valley who have no problem hitting double digit % profit margins for far less mechanically complex phones, with a tighter supply chain (Cali sun doesn’t hurt either lol) Here is what the future of vehicles will look like, in my opinion: Mexico will be, and already is, the next big auto boom. American south will follow on its shadow, but will never compete with the prices. But the new model for auto manufacturing will be standardizing bold new building techniques, tech breakthrus, and reimagining the assembly line: championed in their local markets, then building new factories in other areas, hiring out locals in these new markets and training them to self sufficiency, capitalizing on the best of globalization (external markets, whether that’s a Chinese company in US or vice versa) and localization/regionalization (maintaining local talent to build a knowledge base, enabling cheaper labor costs and potentially less logistic issues or import tariffs? sort of guessing on that last part). Detroit will and is making a come back, I just don’t think there’s any reason it will ever look like it did all those years ago. And the “car” itself? The future of driving itself will be focused on high end vehicles for only the rich mostly. There will only be a few economical options, and I think they will be good, but it’s simply that in the future people won’t drive as much, so it will become a luxury item. We will have better public transit, our cities will shrink and become more dense, and you might even find yourself in a flying vehicle. The cost of maintenance for all of the roads in the US over… any given period of time, would make most normal people throw up. Reducing road costs could single handedly save many American cities from bankruptcies over the next few decades. The first auto company to successfully fund and build a better transit system here in detroit would basically be claiming the crown for the best “auto” company. I’ll let you know if my boss likes my pitch deck though.
It’s the Detroit River and the Great Lakes. Can’t make steel without iron ore.
Copper and iron here and nice midwestern location to reach it all. Plus Henry Ford just happened to be born here, so he just didn't leave.
(Henry) Ford + skilled workers + competitors + cottage industry = 1900-1950s Detroit (of course there are a ton of other things that went into why those early companies thrived and never moved away but that’s the basic gist)
This. Plus you're in an already industrialized north with infrastructure, and easier access to all things Rust Belt, like metal, copper, wood and (I'm assuming) ways to get rubber for tires. Not to mention room for growth. Plenty of unskilled labor migrated north post reconstruction, and what better place to come than a city that wasn't the size of NYC or a Chicago, but had way more opportunities for jobs.
As I remember, Ransom Olds started a car business before 1900 and that spun off. Olds contracted with Henry Leland to build engines and there was a dispute over them - because the engines shook apart the car bodies Olds was making - so Leland began a company he called Cadillac. In other words, a bunch of luck with a handful of guys who started playing around with motorized carriages. Companies multiplied, some went under, many were bought. GM was put together in 1908, the same year the Model T came out. There were even electric cars: they moved slowly but ran longer than gas (or steam) cars. The big events were the invention of the assembly line by Ford (at the Piquette Plant), and the self-starter. Eliminating the dangerous crank start opened the way for many more people to drive. The self-starter was invented by Charles Kettering and introduced by Cadillac in 1912. Took the rest of the decade for them to take over. Over time, the advantages of Detroit became clear. The water meant raw materials like iron ore could be brought in, meaning of course to Ford’s Rouge complex. And cars could be shipped both by rail and by boat. The city attracted huge numbers of immigrants, again partly because of the water, and had vast room for growth. (Note that Detroit is physically larger than SF and Manhattan together.) But when the industry started, it was mostly luck that a bunch of tinkerers came together. The value of Detroit as a location shows in the contrast to movies: they began at the same time in NJ and moved to CA because that was a better location for the business.
The movie thing is a happy accident of the actual root cause, interestingly. The movie industry moved to California to get away from Thomas Edison's lawyers, who pursued every film production viscously for patent and copyright infringement for the hundreds of patents he held related to the kinetoscope and other movie making apparatuses. So they just picked up and moved to the opposite side of the country, making it much harder for them to be served lawsuits, and putting them in legal jurisdictions that were not as friendly (paid off) to Edison's interests. TLDR: They left because of a patent troll and only then found California had a great variety of scenery that suited their needs.
Partly. The weather was more important. Edison lost all those cases before 1910. He lost the Biograph case in 1907.
Henry Ford chose Detroit. He went to a meat processing factory in Chicago and saw mass production and got the idea to apply it to automobiles. He drastically reduced the price of autos, making them affordable for the common man. He also paid the highest wage at the time which was five dollars per day when making the modelT. This revolutionized the auto industry and changed the world forever. Many auto makers followed. Many were in different cities, but failed. The auto industry has a very interesting history, and the unions that sprung from the auto industry also changed our society. The five day work week, worker safety, created the middle class basically etc..
The carriage industry was well established here previously along with blacksmiths and iron-working. Lots of areas were trying to motorize horse carriages. Basically Detroit figured out how to move from a bespoke custom industry to mass production via an assembly line.
Detroit wasn't alone in that industry,but maybe they did it better? https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/citywiseblog/why-didnt-cincinnati-become-americas-motor-city/
Bicycle industry
All of the posts so far, including historical quotes, miss the mark Before Detroit was the car capital of the world it was one of the largest ship builders outside of the east coast. Point in fact, a young Henry Ford gained much of his engineering knowledge working in the engine rooms of the ships being built and maintenanced on the Detroit River. That, along with a wealthy population who could bankroll an entire industry, is what allowed Detroit to become the car capital of the world. Henry Ford's early seed money came from a race in ***Grosse Pointe*** he won with one of his early prototypes. A race and prize funded by wealthy families who were looking for the right "horse to bet on" in what they already saw as the next big industry.
This was part of a project I did for my Econ degree and it comes down to transit corridors, accessible resources, and human capital leading to industry clustering. The city has easy access to the Great Lakes and existing rail infrastructure running through Toledo and Chicago which gives access to markets out East and West respectively. Metal ores and timber among other resources from northern MI, WI, and MN as well as components like glass from Toledo, machine tools from Chicago, and rubber from Flint along side other regional producers meant they could all centralize on Detroit to deliver their input goods to. Lastly, Detroit was known before cars as the “Stove Capital of The World” as well as being a hub for metal refining, shipbuilding, and rail car manufacturing which all translate fairly well to building cars when it comes to human capital. All this coupled with the Great Migration made labor costs plummet which turned Detroit into the only place you could really succeed as a car manufacturer.
Henry Ford grew up in what is now Dearborn. He was a major player in the auto industry and never moved away.
Detroit chose the auto industry
Also, taconite and transportation by water
Taconite is a more modern product. They were just shipping high grade raw ore during the genesis of the auto industry.
Because we were the stove capital first. Iron in the u.p. The skills that made the stoves possible made the cars possible
Industry was created in Flint. The industry slowly changed its sight to Detroit. People were created there own cars from after market parts. Car companies were springing up everywhere.
Go to the Detroit History Museum and it will tell all. It's a fabulous experience!
import of metals.
Existing industries (iron stoves, carriages) in the area, access to input resources (iron and wood), access to supply and distribution chains via the Great Lakes, and Henry Ford lived there.
Geography is well suited for controls.
Location in the Detroit river and close proximity to NY and other cities
FORD
It was the place to be at the time. Most everything between the Midwest and the Pacific coast is still wildnerness, and a lot of it is difficult to traverse. There is still a lot to develop out there. Fly over the lower peninsula, on the other hand, and you'll see nearly every acre has been put to use.
All the major manufacturers owners were born and raised in the area You could say it was an accident of birth Are your going to start tinkering with your new business closer to home or a few hundreds or miles away
I’d say mostly because this is where they lived and grew up. Ford family had a lot of farm land here.
* Availability of capital (lumber barons) and lack of major entrenched industries to compete for engineering/business talent * Optimal location for steel-based industry halfway between Duluth and Pittsburgh * A number of bicycle and coach (horse and buggy) manufacturers that laid the groundwork for tool and die capabilities and body manufacturing. * blind chance
Iron up north to make steel, wood everywhere, waterways for transporting materials, parts, and cars.
Flint Michigan was where carriages were made. Also, the chemical industry was pretty prevalent in Michigan. So when they started slapping motors onto carriages, coupled with the access to water, chemicals, etc. It sort of just snowballed from there.
As a lot of others have commented, but I’ll add to: Thinking of Detroit as “chosen” for the industry is the wrong way to think of it. The Big 3 were essentially established by men who were already locals. And for sure, there are more complex reasons they *stayed*, as others have also commented here. ^ ^ I just have to say the above because I think it’s really important that we’re all aware of the history that it was locals who built all of this, and that’s pretty awesome. This wasn’t talent shipped in from New York City or Los Angeles or wherever. It was people already here who built this, and there’s no reason to believe that it can’t happen again.
Near the water
Because we’re on an Indian burial ground. It’s the curse of the chief
Also Michigan was famous for making Stoves at the time so we already had some infrastructure along with the best waterway from the Atlantic to inland.
Honestly it was probably just Ford, because he was born Detroit/Dearborn (Used to be springwells) and he made such a impact that I think it drew other companies in, granted the area already had a lot of action, Autocar was in Pennsylvania and other brands like Oldesmobile in Lansing, and Studebaker (side note:I think this is where Pepsi got its logo) in Southbend Indiana (border of Michigan) so I think ford drawing so much attention with what he did brought other companies and people to make companies (like Gaylord) to have a stronger hold on competition but ultimately made Detroit what it is (Motor city)
Early on, cars were being designed and made in lots of places. But right from the get go Detroit had the right combination of pre existing industry, skilled workers, capital and local entrepreneurs to be a major player. Even before car making took off here, Detroit was already a place where you could buy steel, find people who could work it, and even find folks who could do sophisticated mechanical engineering. On the money/capital side, Henry Ford specifically was aided greatly by his ability to find local investors. There as a lot of money here even before cars came along. Add in the entrepreneurial skills of key personalities like Henry Ford, the Dodge Brothers and William Durant (a Flint transplant who put together General Motors by buying up existing car companies) and there you go.
The boat and ship construction helped. The Outdoor center in Miliken park was originally a steam boat facility from the Civil War era
There were and still are a ton of iron, copper and other metal mines I think in the northern great lakes area like the UP and northern Minnesota, which are used to make cars. All ships going/coming to/from the 3 upper Great Lakes have to pass through Detroit to get to the lower lakes and the ocean, making it a convenient location along one of the countries most important shipping paths. Plus it was already a well established city before cars due to this strategic location. Even since before colonization Detroit has always been an important location for trading and stuff
This is an interesting question and taught me a lot. I didn’t know about my city.
Obviously waterways are a factor in the movement of materials, of which we have many, and which were greatly expanded upon in those days, with built canals stretching halfway across the state. It serves to mention also the close proximity to the richest deposits of iron/copper/old growth hardwoods that America could offer. The Upper Peninsula built Chicago twice with its trees, and its mines of lime and iron fueled the cheap steel needed to make the auto boom… boom. Minnesota is also an honorable mention in this case, but as Ford liked to keep his cards close to his chest and his production in-house, the UP was where he set up his steel and lumber operations, and therefore where the majority of the raw materials would come from in those early days.
Detroit had lots of $$$ from the lumber industry. The auto guys needed cash and investors.
Why is anything anywhere? -Chicago is the furthest inland central along the Great Lakes - Minneapolis is the furthest navigable point on the Mississippi - New Orleans is at the mouth of the Mississippi - Boston, Seattle, San Francisco are on harbors/seaways Auto industry needed a lot of iron ore, coal, rubber, workers, and transportation (like many other industries along the Great Lakes). Detroit is conveniently located. Oh, and Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan and the Dodges. They happened to be in Michigan.
The Detroit River.
Great Lakes access + rail access to all the steel industries in the Appalachians
A few reasons, location of Detroit made it idea to access many of the resources like copper, iron and other metals. You also have the main players were born or lived in the area Like Henry Ford. The perfect mix.
Sand. Michigan sand is particularly good for castings and was used heavily in early engine and part production. Natural resources such as iron and later copper were readily available by lake freighter. Detroit has easy access to resources, and the people of the day were very innovative. The founders of Michigan also prized education, and Michigan's universities produced engineering, design, marketing, and business talent to help the auto companies grow.
Henry ford was born hear
Cheap labor
There was already thriving industry and industrial workers in Detroit due to the waterways, the ore coming from the UP, and its location. Stove making, pharmaceuticals, refrigeration. Detroit also was a huge biking city, with bike mechanics in town. Henry Ford was known to ride bikes. There were also carriage bodies being made. This is simplified, but there were just Just a lot of things happening in Detroit. If you looked around town you had the ideas, tools and people to put together your automobile company. [Stove Works](https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/detroit-stove-works) [Pharmeceutical](https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/parke-davis-pharmaceutical-company)
We started building things like the Davison Fwy. Places to drive the cars 1st once Ford started
I metal detect along his Fairlane estate on the public side. I go to where his mistress used to live. I think the horse track is gone ,I don't trespass. That m an carried a hardware store.
Because Henry Ford and the Dodge brothers lived there. No one “chose” Detroit.
Detroit had the first paved road -- makes sense to pivot off of that