GM’s 68-year-old Willow Run plant – located between Ypsilanti and Belleville, Michigan – was finally closed last week. The decision to do so was made as a result of “company restructuring” due to GM’s  recent bankruptcy.

Although owned by GM, the Willow Run plant was first built by Henry Ford during World War II, where the factory was built on farm land Ford owned. Soon, a hangar and airstrip was added as the plant was built to meet the need for B-24 Liberators. While the first B-24 was completed in October of 1942, it took only two years for Willow Run to be producing 650 B-24s a month.

Ford later sold the plant to independent car makers Henry J. Kaiser and Joseph W. Frazer at the close of the war. Eight years later, in 1953 as Kaiser Frazer merged with Willys/Overland, the plant was sold to GM. Used to produce pickup trucks between 1956 and 1958, Corvairs throughout their nine-year production, Novas and Caprices as well as parts for other various GM vehicles, the Willow Run plant grew to a 5 million square foot facility employing 5,000 people at its height.

At the time of GM’s bankruptcy, 1,364 persons were still employed at the plant.