Hazelwood, Missouri

T he story of Hazelwood, MO goes that it was organized in the conference rooms of the 1948 Ford plant. “The Ford facility helped build this city,” says Becky Ahlvin, Community and Economic Development Coordinator. “They came in 1946 and started building the assembly plant that became operational two years later, one year before Hazelwood became incorporated as a village,” adds Matt Zimmerman, City Manager. “How that came to be, according to the history books, is partly the result of us wanting to control our own destiny. We didn’t want other towns coming in and pillaging from the long- standing German farmers who’d settled here. We didn’t want them dictating the development plans around the Ford factory.” The post-WW2 boom years of the 1950s and 1960s had a sizeable impact on the growth of the aviation industry in AT A GLANCE HAZELWOOD, MISSOURI WHAT: A city of 26,000 WHERE: St. Louis County, Missouri WEBSITE: www.hazelwoodmo.org