Sublime

Eisenhower not only admired Clay’s success in the business world but considered him a walking encyclopedia of American politics.

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.

Meanwhile, Jim Hill vastly expanded his fuel business. In 1869 he and partners Chauncey Griggs and John Armstrong created a concern called Hill, Griggs and Company, concentrating at first on the cordwood business that he had been interested in for several years. Logging primarily off forestlands to the north, they sold heavily, once again, to the r

Jim Hill worked incessantly at improving every aspect of the railroad’s structure and operation. He traveled back and forth along the line in his business car, looking for dips and bumps and spying out curves that could be straightened and grades that could be lessened. More than any other railroad leader of the day, he had an engineer’s passion fo