Road Building

This 1931 silent film, produced by the Ford Motor Company and photographed by Mr. Bacon near Adrian, Michigan, showcases the gritty mechanics of road construction in the early Depression era. Filmed in black-and-white on 16mm, it follows a convoy of heavy Ford trucks hauling materials across a bustling worksite. A crane swings massive buckets onto trucks, filling them with dirt or feeding a towering concrete mixer-spreader. Workers in boots shovel and smooth wet concrete across roadbeds, a machine leveler gliding behind, flattening the surface. Close-ups capture a laborer’s sweat-streaked face, trucks rumbling in the dust. Trailer trucks, loaded to the brim, navigate rutted dirt paths, some getting stuck and rocked free. Under a water tower, a worker douses a truck’s load, while cranes dump concrete or sand, and a team of horses occasionally aids the effort. A train of flatcars, pushed by a small locomotive, hauls buckets beneath the mixer, weaving past construction shacks. The film, a testament to Ford’s industrial might and infrastructure’s rise, pulses with the era’s raw, machine-driven ambition.