By Jonathan Miller
Richmond Hill Historical Society & Museum will be looking to restore an old Ford fire truck it took possession of last year, the museum’s operations manager said recently.
It’s only fitting that the Richmond Hill museum should take possession of a Ford vehicle. After all, it was Henry Ford, the automotive titan, who put the small southern town, located 21 miles southwest of Savannah, on the map. Ford made Richmond Hill his winter home for nearly 25 years.
The museum grounds consists of an old kindergarten building, built by Ford in 1940, a barber shop, which Ford frequented, and since early 2023, an old fire truck.
The fire truck, a 1937 Ford V8 repurposed as a pumper for the Richmond Hill Fire Department years ago, used to sit under a tarp beneath a carport behind Fire Station 2. The truck was moved to the museum property last year and currently sits on the ground, without a cover, behind the kindergarten building.
“We would like to do a restore on it (fire truck) of some sort,” said Paul Downs, operations manager at the museum. “At the very least possibly a clean up and paint job to at least restore it a little bit. There are ongoing discussions about that with the Historical Society Board.”
The fire truck started out with the Richmond Hill Fire Department then was sold to Midway Fire Department. The truck has “Midway Fire Dept. No. 1” emblazoned on the doors. At some point the truck was given back to the Richmond Hill Fire Department where it sat in the carport until it was moved to the museum.
Downs said he is trying to find out who actually owns the fire truck. Once a chain of ownership is established then the restoration can begin.
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JONATHAN MILLER, web editor of FireApparatus.com, has been a journalist for 30 years working for newspapers, both in print and online, and was the director of digital media at a business magazine.
