Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
My fellow gentlemen. I have glanced at some of the messages posted on this BB and some are reasoned and intelligent, and others are not. Let me set a few things right. My railroad to the Pacific was a great adventure, certainly my greatest. Also, it was the most northerly of the transcontinentals in the United States. The name "Northern Pacific" was already used. And I wanted to build a railroad greater than that, so the obvious name that came to mind was the Great Northern Railway. Yes, that name was already used by railways in Great Britain, Ireland, and Australia, but nonetheless, it was a good name with a good sound to it and it had not been used in the Americas as yet. Of course, the underlying charter I used was of the St Paul, Minneapolis, and Mannitoba Railway. But that name had too much of a parochial quality to it. My new railroad to the PNW had to have a more universal ring to it than that. The Great Northern sounded good, and so it was. My interest in the NP was mostly to rid myself of a nuisance competitor. The GN and the NP had many parallel and crossing lines with each other in attempts to rob each other's markets or cut one the other off from reaching our own markets. This was especially true in Minnesota and Washington where the bulk of the populous was. From my early days in railroading with the St Paul & Pacific and up until my involvement in the takeover of the NP in 1896, the NP had fought to block me out or beat me to many a territory. Better to have it as an ally than have that dratted Edward Harriman use it to cut my throat. Yes, John Morgan bought up most of the NP stock but I bought a lot of shares myself. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough power to control the NP myself and John gave control of the NP to that darned Charles Mellen. But old Melon-head finally moved on to the New Haven and I had more say in the NP after that. But my interest was always the Great Northern anyway. I put my back into it, my sweat into it, my money into it, and all I had because it was MINE from the first day of its creation. A lot of people said it was "Hill's folly" to build a new line to the Pacific without federal land grants. But I had a plan and I put a lot of effort into building traffic for the line everywhere it went. It paid for itself through operating revenue, not by the sale of land grant property. I didn't have time to try to run two railroads. We tried to form a trust company in 1901 with the purchase of the CB&Q, but that dratted Theodore Roosevelt threw a monkey wrench into the works. Regarding Steven's Pass as my route across the Cascades: I wanted my OWN pass without the threat of prior claims being asserted and tying me up in court for years on end. My business plan depended on having a through connection to Puget Sound as quickly as possible. Snoqualmie Pass had been identified as the route for a number of Seattle founders' attempts to have railroad connections to the rest of the country. The NP had tried to strangle Seattle and squeeze it off the map in favor of their terminus in Tacoma. The Seattle fathers didn't take well to that and made several attempts to build their own railroad across the mountains. The NP had taken control of some of these early railroads and would have tied my attempt to gain a right-of-way in knots for as long as they could to starve me of traffic. I couldn't afford this, so a more northerly pass was sought out. Steven's Pass was the resulting choice to steer clear of any prior claims. So there you have it. I'm an old, old man and getting tired, so I am going to sign off now. Sincerely, James Jerome Hill
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag