St. Paulites cheered when they saw local auto dealer W.S. Williams driving through town in a brand new Model T on May 4, 1925.

A sign on the back announced that it was the first car manufactured at the recently completed Ford plant in Highland Park. Williams had written a check for the sedan immediately after it rolled off the assembly line that morning.

Ford’s Twin Cities Assembly Plant would continue to operate for nearly nine decades, producing more than 6 million vehicles and employing thousands of people.

When Henry Ford first visited the site in April 1923, it was 167 acres of forest and prairie overlooking the Mississippi River on the outskirts of St. Paul.

The remote location was attractive for two main reasons, writes Brian McMahon in his 2013 history of the plant.

First, Ford could use the river to ship in raw materials and ship out finished automobiles, rather than paying expensive railroad rates. Second was the adjacent hydroelectric dam, which would allow him to power his operations without relying on the unstable coal industry.

Minneapolis and St. Paul had been squabbling for years over the license to the dam’s electricity, and the Federal Power Commission was only too happy to hand it over to Ford and break the stalemate, McMahon writes.

Construction of the 19-acre single-story plant began on Dec. 10, 1923. The $10 million factory was touted in newspaper coverage as Ford’s largest outside Detroit.

Eager to keep the new factory from being built in Minneapolis, St. Paul officials and business leaders had rolled out the red carpet for Ford, making necessary changes to city zoning regulations to accommodate the development, McMahon writes.

They even went so far as to name the neighborhood surrounding the plant after Highland Park, Mich., the Detroit suburb where Ford’s primary production facility was located, according to Donald Empson’s book “The Street Where You Live.”

“In short, the project was put together as a complete community effort and handed to Henry Ford on a silver platter,” McMahon writes.

When the plant turned out its first Model T in May 1925, the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul were there to greet the car. The plant’s superintendent took them for a spin in the sedan before turning it over to Williams for display at his downtown dealership.

Ford officials announced that morning that the company would close its downtown Minneapolis plant and transfer those operations to the Highland Park facility.

The new plant produced nearly 95,000 vehicles that first year.

In 2006, the Ford Motor Co. announced plans to close the Highland Park plant. A white Ford Ranger that rolled off the assembly line on Dec. 16, 2011, was the last car produced at the 86-year-old factory.

Demolition of the plant wrapped up in 2015 and the site is now awaiting redevelopment.