To continue our discussion of boomtowns and ghost towns, I offer you the town of "Fordlandia". I just watched a very interesting show about this town. In the 1920's, Henry Ford decided to build a plantation, plant and city in the Amazon jungle in Brazil, on the banks of the Tapajos River to harvest and produce rubber for the tires of his cars. The town would operate in an autonomous manner with no interference from the Brazilian government. A elaborate town and enterprise was built, with everything his workers could need, including a church, a dance hall and a golf course. Everything was the most up-to-date and he planned it to be a model community. Unfortunately, Ford wanted it run like an American town and plant with American efficiency, and this didn't work out well. To start out, he didn't listen to the local experts on rubber tree cultivation and had the tree planted close together in orderly rows. Apparently the rubber trees didn't care for America efficiency and died in great numbers. The local workers didn't care to operate under Ford's ideas of American industry, either, which included mandatory square dances in the dance hall and Ford's other rules, like no alcohol. Essentially, no rubber was ever produced and the development of artificial rubber lead to the demise of the operation and the town/plantation/plant was abandoned. Later the whole thing was sold back to the Brazilian government for less than $300,000. It's now a tourist attraction.
Interesting Mary...OTOH I'm unsure if I prefer the Chinese...... SAO PAULO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - China’s State Power Investment Corporation is in talks to acquire two additional hydroelectric dams and two thermal plants in Brazil, a person with knowledge of the matter said Thursday. One of the hydroelectric dams is Usina Tres Irmaos, an 800 megawatt dam in Sao Paulo state, controlled by Brazilian infrastructure group Triunfo Participacoes e Investimentos SA (TPI), the person added, requesting anonymity to discuss private talks. Brazilian newspaper Valor Economico first reported the talks over Tres Irmaos on its website on Thursday. State Power and Triunfo declined to comment. But the source added a negotiation with Triunfo would not be easy, because the company was singled out by Brazilian prosecutors this month for not collaborating with a corruption probe investigating the its toll-road operations. The Chinese power company is expected to present a binding offer by the end of the month for control of the Santo Antonio hydropower dam, in the northern state of Rondonia. Talks to acquire the dam have gone on for almost two years. State Power is also considering a bid for two coal thermal plants that France’s Engie SA owns in the southern Brazilian states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, the source said.
My grandmother always had a large rubber tree plant in her solarium. Not sure if it was the same kind that produces rubber. It never seemed to outgrow the room. Hers looked healthier than this one. It had a bigger pot.
I seem to remember someone trying to grow rubber for production in the U.S. and that didn't work out either (Louisiana maybe?), but I can't find it. I know during WW2 the rubber supply was cut off and that's when they started the research to develop synthetic rubber. I grew up in the "Rubber City" and my father, and half the grown ups I knew, worked in a "rubber plant." That's what they called the tire making plants, like Goodyear, Firestone... He worked on the tires for road machinery. I think his job was to apply the (layers of) treads. The whole town, and everybody who worked in the factories, came home smelling like rubber. It wasn't bad. In a way you could say Akron was a boom town also, starting right before WW2. It didn't begin to decline until the mid Seventies, when production started moving south (no unions).
Producing rubber from dandelions? Russian dandelions. This is from 2012. Wonder how that is working out.