Henry Ford had a passion for preserving history, and the great advancements of his day. As such, he founded Greenfield Village, to keep that part of the past alive through the ages. Many of the buildings he moved in are extremely significant parts of history, including:

• Orville & Wilbur Wright’s bicycle shop and home.
• The home of Noah Webster, where he wrote his first dictionary.
• An exact replica of Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory.
• Henry Ford’s birthplace.
• The birthplace of William Holmes McGuffy, author of the McGuffy Reader, one of the best selling books of all time.
• The Illinois courthouse where Abraham Lincoln first practiced law.
• The Cape Cod Windmill, built in 1633, and one of the oldest in America.

Besides all of these landmark historic buildings, Greenfield Village contains many other sorts of buildings needed to make up a good village, with costumed interpreters demonstrating their craft—watch farming, glass blowing, sewing, cooking, pottery making, and so much more, and learn firsthand what life was like a hundred plus years ago.

While there is a great number of things to see there, there are also several things to do, as well: Take a ride in a horse-drawn omnibus, a Ford Model T, a steam locomotive, or a historic 1913 Herschell-Spillman Carousel!

You’re bound to spend much of the day touring the place, so stop and have something to eat at one of the great dining options, with tasty southern cooking, barbecue, or have a meal served by authentic costumed servers at the Eagle Tavern.

Every Memorial Day weekend the village hosts a Civil War reenactment, remembering and honoring those who died during that great conflict. On the weekend after Labor Day each year, Greenfield Village hosts an Old Car Festival, with more than 500 cars attending! There are many other events that happen throughout the year as well, which you can find here.

Admission to the village costs $24 for adults, and $17.50 for children 5–12. Hours vary with the seasons, but you can see an up-to-date schedule and purchase tickets here.

Address:
20900 Oakwood Blvd.
Dearborn, MI 48124-5029

For more information, visit the official Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village website

• Driving America, perhaps the most obvious display given the museum’s name, is still one of the finest. The world’s foremost automotive exhibit, it includes a stunning array of historical vehicles, interactive digital kiosks filled with multimedia information, and the stories of hundreds of people–from ordinary Americans to celebrities–about the first car they ever drove.
• Made in America, a celebration of home-style innovation from the 18th century to the present day. Focusing on manufacturing machines and historical sources of power, the exhibit includes the world’s oldest extant steam engine and the automatic lubricator invented by Elijah “the real” McCoy.
• The Dymaxion House, a prototype dwelling of the future designed by polymath R. Buckminster Fuller over the course of the first half of the 20th century. A round aluminum home containing waterless toilets that shrink-wrap waste and an energy-free ventilation system based on the structural properties of silos, the Dymaxion House is a vision of a resource-efficient future that never was.
• Greenfield Village, a historic town put together by Henry Ford containing many important buildings of his day, including the Wright Brothers’ house & bicycle shop, Noah Webster’s home, and the prototype garage where Ford built the Quadricycle.

And there’s much more to do than just take tours and look at exhibits. You can eat regional cuisine at the Michigan Café, grab a hot dog at a 1950s-era Oscar Meyer Wienermobile or have an old-fashioned breakfast at Lamy’s Diner. Want a souvenir? You can choose from a wide selection of unusual items at the Henry Ford Museum Store, or get something for the kids from the Genius at Play Store. An in-museum state-of-the-art IMAX theater regularly shows feature films and documentaries in 3D. Rated among the Top 10 Tourist Attractions nationwide, the Henry Ford Museum is sure to surprise and inform. Address: 20900 Oakwood Blvd. Dearborn, MI 48124