William E. Scripps, son of Detroit (Evening) News founder James E. Scripps, inherited a publishing fortune but pursued engineering and science to improve people's lives. Fascinated by early twentieth-century technology, he built a motorized boat engine, formed the Scripps-Booth Motor Car Company with his nephew James Scripps Booth, started Detroit's WWJ, the first commercial radio station in the U.S., taught himself to fly an airplane in 1912, and published some of the earliest aerial newspaper photos to improve news delivery. Devoted also to conservation and land reclamation, he began buying land for Wildwood Farm in 1916 and, between then and his death in 1952, acquired 3,830 acres. There Detroit architect Clarence E. Day designed a Norman Revival manor house completed in 1927, and landscape architect Bryant Fleming planned the gardens and grounds. Scripps envisioned Wildwood Farm as a model showing that modern soil conservation methods and livestock raising could restore nutrient-depleted farmland, and to improve the food supply he assembled top breeding stock of cattle, dairy cows, sheep, swine, and draft horses while also creating a wildlife sanctuary. The house and 60 acres are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.