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.

I was expecting a wealth of amateur historians, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the fur trade and fresh insights to borrow, but the first twenty people I talked to had never heard of Joe Walker. Reading history books, it turned out, was not a popular

on their own terms.

idée fixe

AMERICAN ROYALTY

Every bone in Jim Hill’s body drew him toward an impassioned stand on the war between Britain, France, and Russia, on the one side, and Germany and Austria-Hungary, on the other. After all, he had been born in the British Empire, had been reared on English culture, and remained fondly attached to his native Canada.

myrmidons

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 ra

urbane