Fordlandia: Henry Ford's abandoned dream in the heart of the Amazon (12 photos)

In the 1920s, Henry Ford was enjoying success. His factories were churning out thousands of cars, but the price of rubber for tires was skyrocketing due to the monopoly of Asian suppliers.





Then Ford conceived an adventure - to create the world's largest rubber plantation right in the Amazon jungle, the birthplace of rubber trees.



Ford bought 2.5 million hectares and built a utopian city. It had everything: white houses, a hospital, a power plant, a library, a golf club, a hotel, and even regular poetry readings.





Workers - both Americans and Brazilians - were required to lead a "correct" lifestyle. It included a ban on alcohol, country dancing, English-only songs, and poetry readings (under the supervision of managers).



It all started so promisingly, but the project failed miserably. Seedlings died from disease, because Ford ignored the advice of botanists. Malaria decimated the settlers. In 1930, workers staged a riot, which resulted in pogroms and destroyed cars.



By 1945, losses had reached $20 million (more than $200 million today). Ford tried to save the project by founding Belterra downriver, but even there they only collected 750 tons of rubber instead of the planned 38,000.



In 1945, Ford gave up. Brazil bought the land for a paltry $250,000. Today, the ruins of Fordlandia are part of the municipality of Aveiro in the state of Pará. It is a grim monument to ambition defying the jungle. Tourists are brought here to show that even a genius can lose to the Amazon.