HAZELWOOD — On Sept. 21, 1948, Benson Ford, 29-year-old grandson of Ford Motor Co.'s legendary founder, stood before a crowd at the company's new factory in the St. Louis suburbs. The $12 million assembly plant was part of Ford's muscular postwar expansion.

"This is our kind of enterprise adjusting itself to new conditions, meeting new challenges, facing toward tomorrow and moving ahead to create more and better things for more and more people," young Ford told 2,500 employees and 500 dignitaries on the vast parking lot.

By the time he arrived for the formal dedication, the plant's workers already had begun making 1949 Mercurys, curvaceous monsters that remain a cult favorite for motorheads. In 1965, the plant pumped out 101,501 cars. With overtime, workers earned an enviable $170 per week.

The company of grandfather Henry Ford was the first of the future Big Three to build cars in St. Louis, starting in 1914 in a five-story building at 4100 Forest Park Avenue, now the West End Lofts. (Car-making here dates to 1898 with St. Louis Motor Carriage Co.) General Motors began production in north St. Louis in 1920. Chrysler was the latecomer, opening the first of two plants in Fenton in 1959.

Ford built Model T's here, rolling out 325 daily by the mid-'20s. The company declared the Forest Park Avenue building obsolete and closed it in 1942, but within two years was talking about returning to St. Louis with a massive new plant. After rejecting a site near the Mississippi and Meramec rivers, Ford spent $67,231 to buy 99 unincorporated acres at 6250 North Lindbergh Boulevard, near Lambert Field.

Florissant wanted to annex the address, but area residents had their own ideas for the plant's tax potential. After first proposing a village called Motorville, they created Hazelwood in 1949.

By the 1960s, St. Louis was the second-biggest carmaker after Detroit, with about 30,000 people working in the area's Big Three plants or parts suppliers. Most people thought Benson Ford's upbeat prophecy would hold forever.

The plant's 2,800 workers built their last Mercury Grand Marquis in 1985 and, with the help of $300 million in new robotic equipment, began making Ford Aerostar minivans. They switched to building the popular Explorer and Mountaineer SUVs in 1995. Times stayed good.

But a decade later, America's fondness for SUVs was fading. Ford executives declared the Hazelwood plant obsolete. On March 8, 2006, some of the remaining 1,300 workers watched the last Explorer roll off the line. The plant has been demolished, and crews are clearing rubble for a planned new business park.