Sublime

Jim Hill now focused nearly his entire attention on organizing the Pacific Extension.

And like many of his fellow midwesterners, he railed at the imperialistic financial reign of the Northeast over other regions. In October 1912, Hill purchased two major financial institutions, the First National Bank and the Second National Bank, both of Saint Paul, and in 1913 he merged them under the name of the former. He poured nearly $4

The Burlington directors easily persuaded their stockholders, who could choose either the princely $200 per share return or the 4 percent bonds, to turn over their shares, and the Hill-Morgan team now had the key railroad they needed to round out their regional railroad empire.

And its financial strength, quite simply, lay at the heart of the competitiveness of the newly completed transcontinental: it was tightly capitalized at low rates of interest. Although its land grant did not, generally speaking, extend beyond the western border of Minnesota, the GN also possessed other, more subtle advantages. The GN’s major

One of the hoariest, and most mischievous, of all the many legends surrounding Hill is the story, still widely repeated today, that rhapsodizes about how he built a great transcontinental line without the benefit of a federal land grant. This is considerably less than a half-truth. In fact, the Minnesota and Pacific received an initial grant of

Year by year, Hill and his railroad organizations assembled an elaborate system of agricultural research and promotion.

Unlike the original transcontinental, the Union Pacific–Central Pacific system to the south, whose charter preceded it by two years, the NP received no subsidy package of federal loans. But it got instead what amounted to the greatest subsidy Uncle Sam ever bestowed on a private entity: a land grant of twenty sections per mile of track in the

The epic battle of American railroad history began in 1901 and centered on control of the strategic Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad (the “Q”). Once Hill and Morgan had consolidated the NP with the GN under Hill’s effective tutelage, it made more sense than ever to forge a connecting link between the Twin Cities–Duluth termini of the two

Of course, his primary legacy lies in his railroads, the GN especially but also the NP, the Burlington, and the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle, which remained—after the Northern Securities decision—bound by a loose community of interest although not by a direct affiliation. The