The Firestone farm, where tire magnate Harvey Firestone grew up in Columbiana County, Ohio, at Greenfield Village.

DEARBORN, Michigan – Sure, you can read about the Wright brothers in a book and learn how they converted their knowledge of bicycles into the world’s first airplane.

Statue of Thomas Edison at Greenfield Village.

Or you can head to suburban Detroit to tour the Wrights’ bicycle shop, where historical presenter John Morris will tell you exactly how it happened.

You can read in a book how Henry Ford transformed American society with his mass-produced Model T automobile. Or you can head to suburban Detroit to ride in one.

And it makes for a timely, easy road trip from Northeast Ohio as the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday in 2026.

Where else can you learn about Thomas Edison’s efforts to perfect the lightbulb alongside George Washington Carver’s work to improve agricultural production?

Or Noah Webster’s work on the first American dictionary next to the home where Robert Frost penned “Spring Pools”?

The Wright family home, built in 1870, was moved from Dayton to Greenfield Village in the 1930s.

And when you need a break from the lesson: There are stilts and hoops and other 19th-century activities to try, plus 1860s-era baseball to watch and historic (and contemporary) foods to sample.

Civil Rights-era house coming

It had been more than a decade since my previous visit to Greenfield Village, and not a lot has changed. But it’s about to.

The living history museum, created by Henry Ford and open since 1929, recently purchased the Selma, Ala. home of Dr. Sullivan Jackson and Richie Jean Jackson. It was in this house that Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders planned the historic marches from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965 and where King frequently talked by phone to President Lyndon Johnson about voting rights.

The house, purchased by Greenfield Village in 2023, has been relocated to Michigan and is currently being rebuilt on the village campus, adjacent to the William McGuffey Birthplace and behind the Logan County (Illinois) Courthouse where President Abraham Lincoln practiced law.

It will be the first new house in Greenfield Village in 40 years, the most contemporary structure in town, and the only one telling the story of America’s Civil Rights Movement.

The Wright Cycle Co., where the world's first airplane was developed, at Greenfield Village.

The house will add a necessary jolt of more modern history to the campus, which currently features nearly 100 historic buildings and re-creations focused on American history from the 1930s and earlier.

The Jackson Home is expected to open to the public in summer 2026.

Though there are a variety of structures and time periods represented in Greenfield Village, its storytelling strength is in the collection of artifacts from the late 19th century through the early 20th century, covering Ford, the Wrights, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and others.

A Model T tour

We started our tour aboard a 1914-era Model T, the hugely popular car that Henry Ford first introduced in 1909.

The car - and Ford - revolutionized the world, said driver Jim Gibbs.

Ford Motor Co.'s first plant, re-created at one-quarter scale, at Greenfield Village.

By 1914, Ford had introduced the assembly line to automobile production, which decreased the price of a car and therefore made it more attainable. He also paid his workers more while requiring them to work less.

“The whole world came to Detroit to work. It’s the reason I’m here,” said Gibbs, who noted that his own grandfather moved to Michigan in 1916 after working in the West Virginia coal mines.

After the car ride, we continued our Ford lesson at a re-created version of the carmaker’s first Ford Motor Co. plant, built at one-quarter scale. On display here: The 15 millionth Model T, created in 1927, shortly before production of the vehicle was discontinued.

Inside Thomas Edison's Menlo Park machine shop, re-created at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

“At the end of the run, he’s not making any money on these cars,” said presenter Ken Trumble.

But at about $260 per vehicle, millions of Americans could afford them.

Our education of the automobile complete, we headed across the street to learn about bicycles, airplanes and Ohio natives Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Fun on stilts on the Village Green at Greenfield Village.

Ford acquired the Wright Cycle Shop, initially located at 1127 West Third St. in Dayton, in 1936 and opened it to the public in 1938.

An earlier Wright cycle shop remains in Dayton and is part of a National Park Service site, but the one at Greenfield is the place where the Wrights did most of their work on their nascent flying machines.

“This is where they made it, folks. This is where aviation started,” said presenter John Morris.

While the original Wright Flyer is at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., a small model is on display here. “If you look closely, it’s all bicycle hardware,” said Morris.

Ford also acquired the Wright family home in Dayton and moved it to Dearborn, where it stands next to the Wright Cycle Shop.

Orville Wright was still alive when the buildings were purchased and relocated and could assist Greenfield in remodeling them to show how they looked decades earlier.

“They could sit us down and tell us the color of the wallpaper,” said presenter Kirk Haas. “That’s the actual furniture they sat on to argue about how to make an airplane.”

Touring Greenfield Village; that's the Sarah Jordan Boarding House on the left, relocated from Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Ford also relocated Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory from New Jersey (it’s labeled a re-creation here, but only because it was in such disrepair that much of it had to be reconstructed).

This is where Edison invented the phonograph and perfected the lightbulb, making it commercially viable.

Also here: Edison’s lab from Fort Myers, Fla., and the Sarah Jordan Boarding House, also from New Jersey, where many Menlo Park employees lived and one of the first homes ever to be wired for electrical light.

A short walk from the Edison compound is the Firestone Farm, where tire magnate Harvey Firestone spent his childhood years. It was moved from Columbiana County, Ohio, in the 1980s.

As part of the relocation deal, Greenfield agreed to keep the property as a working farm – there are Merino sheep here, Brahma chickens, cooking demonstrations and more.

While Greenfield Village is a largely upbeat retelling of the American story – there is no mention of Henry Ford’s anti-union efforts or his notorious antisemitism – it doesn’t entirely ignore the country’s darkest chapters.

Visitors can tour two brick slave quarters relocated from the Heritage Plantation near Savannah, Georgia, where 201 enslaved African Americans cultivated rice and manufactured bricks and cast-iron products.

Other stops on our tour:

Railroad Junction, with an operating roundhouse and six historic locomotives on display, including the American Locomotive Co.’s massive steam Atlantic, 14½ feet tall by 10 feet wide, built in 1902 and designed to pull light wooden passenger cars at high speeds.
Liberty Craftworks, with working weaving, pottery, printing and glass shops, plus a gristmill, sawmill and carding mill. The Liberty Craftworks Store is filled with items made by working artists here.

Horse-draw carriage rides are among the options for traveling around Greenfield Village.

There’s also a working, 1913-era Herschell-Spillman carousel; a large, construction-themed playground; and nine eateries.

Ford, it should be noted, never intended for Greenfield Village to be a tourist attraction. It was initially opened as a school. The public was invited to tour the campus starting in 1933, although there’s still a high school located on the property (the Henry Ford Academy).

On the streets of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. That's the Wright brothers' childhood home on the left, with the Wright Cycle Shop in the distance.

“Henry believed that studying history in buildings where history was made was better than learning it in books,” said Haas, referring to Ford by his first name. “It morphed into the tourist attraction it is.”

And for that, this history-loving traveler is grateful.

Greenfield Village: If you go

What: The 80-acre living history museum is just one part of the vast Henry Ford complex, which also includes the terrific Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and the Ford Rouge Factory Tour.

Where: The Dearborn, Mich., campus is about 150 miles from Cleveland, an easy drive west on the Ohio Turnpike and north on I-75.

When: Greenfield Village is open daily 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. through September, and weekends through December. It opens for the season in April. Note: Greenfield Village will close at 3 p.m. July 2-5 for a separate, ticketed event, Salute to America.

How much: Online prices are $39 for ages 12-61; $35 for ages 62 and older; $29.25 for ages 5-11. Parking is $9.

Model T rides and more: Historic car rides, train rides, horse-drawn carriage rides and carousel rides are extra. We paid $14 each for a 10-minute tour aboard a 1914-era Model T.

Where to eat: There are numerous places to eat within the gates of Greenfield Village, including Eagle Tavern, located inside an 1850-era tavern with a menu featuring asparagus soup and stewed rabbit; and Stand 44, new last year, with a focus on sustainability and a guest chef every month. We opted for A Taste of History, with history-inspired menu items from George Washington Carver, Sarah Jordan, Luther Burbank and others.