Sublime

everyone around the Saint Paul levees came to know “Jim” Hill, his name usually rendered as one word, “Jimhill,” a man who always seemed up on anything and everything that went on.

Hill especially loved to hold forth on four subjects near and dear to his heart: free trade, resource depletion and conservation, agriculture, and of course, railroading.

Hill even plowed $25,000 into the faltering New York Times. All across the GN empire, Jim Hill’s private car became a landmark, frequently only a mythical landmark, pulled up on sidings from Fargo to Olympia, Washington—there to dictate policy regarding rail regulation and other pressing issues. He was becoming a legend in his own time, an ogre to

for Hill, the merger truly represented the capstone of his life’s work.

Hill genuinely cared about quality rail service and about public opinion.

arranger Gil Evans,