AN AMERICAN CLASSIC
HELPED GROW A CITY AND
From the
WIN A WAR
By Jeannie Howard | Photo Credit Richmond Public Library
Kaiser Shipyards
to the Standard
Oil refinery, along
with roughly
forty other war
related industries,
Richmond
quickly garnered
the reputation
as being the
“World War
II home front”
early in the war
years. However,
before the United
States entered
the fighting and
well before the
war broke out in
Europe, the city
of Richmond
and its council of
industry set sights
on building up the city’s commerce and industry sectors.
Photograph of Ford Assembly Plant with it’s sawtooth roof in the foreground. Shipyard
Number Two is on the right.
One company in particular the city sought was Ford
Motor Company. “Ford would have been really valued,”
says Melinda McCrary, executive director of the Richmond
Museum. “The city courted Ford for a longtime in order
to get them to come.” McCrary credits the deep ports of
Richmond, which also helped to attract other industries to the
city, as well as the railroad access as being valuable features that
made Ford take notice of Richmond.
Coming to the region in the early 19th century, the
Richmond portion of the railroad was a spur off of the
transcontinental railroad, which ended in Oakland, according
to McCrary. “Because we have such deep ports here in
Richmond, material could be brought in from anywhere in
the Pacific Ocean and literally be taken to anywhere in the
United States on the railroad. The fact that the railroad was
here was a huge benefit. It was revolutionary at the time.”
While the courtship between the city of Richmond and
62 MARKETPLACECONTRACOSTA.COM APRIL 2018
Ford Motor
Company went
on for some
time, Ford was
finally won over
after numerous
modifications
were made to
the waterfront
parcel at no
expense to the car
manufacture. The
city of Richmond
and Ford Motor
Company had
a very close
relationship,
according to
McCrary. “The
city manager,
James McVitty,
drove a 1931
Model A Ford for
many years. It was
the number three Ford out of the plant and it’s the marquee
in our exhibit here at the museum,” she says. “Richmond was
a cow town back then—it was all ranching and cattle—so, in
1931 it was a super fancy sight to see that car driving down the
Richmond dirt roads. There is a lot of lure around this car. ”
Once completed in 1930, the Richmond Ford plant was
the biggest on the west coast. Within the sprawling 500,000
square foot “daylight factory” designed by Albert Kahn as
many as 400 vehicles could be fabricated per eight-hour shift.
Within a relative short period of time, Ford became the third
largest employer in Richmond, which probably played a role
in the tremendous growth the city experienced in the early
1940s.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the
United States officially entered World War II. While U.S.
manufactures had been producing military equipment for
sale to European forces since the start of the war, military
manufacturing for U.S. use was amped up at the request of
President Roosevelt. To achieve the highest rate of efficiency,