English: Historic Marker, James J. Hill / The James J. Hill House - James J. Hill-side, Minnesota, United States.

TEXT: "Most men who have really lived here have had, in some shape, their great adventure. This railway is mine," wrote James J. Hill to the Great Northern Railway employees upon his retirement in 1912. Throughout his long working life Hill remained a titanic force in the economic transformation of the Northwest as his railroads encouraged immigrant settlements, agricultural development and commercial expansion.

Hill was born in southern Canada in 1838 and began his career in transportation as a 17-year-old "mud clerk" on the bustling St. Paul levee. He spent 20 years in the shipping business on the Mississippi and Red rivers, and in 1878 along with several other investors he purchased the nearly bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. Hill toiled ceaselessly during the next two decades to push the line north to Canada and west across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. "When we are all dead and gone," Hill declared of the renamed Great Northern Railway, "the sun will shine, the rain will fall, and this railroad will run as usual."

"Empire Builder" Hill pursued a vast network of related businesses: coal and iron ore mining, electric and waterpower development, Great Lakes and Pacific Ocean shipping, agriculture and milling, banking and finance. Hill supported many educational institutions and built the St. Paul Public Library along with the reference library that bears his name. He spoke at countless county fairs and civic organizations on scientific agriculture and sound business practices. Presidents sought his financial support and economic advice on national and international concerns. After amassing a personal fortune of $63 million, James J. Hill died in his Summit Avenue home on May 29, 1916, one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures of America's gilded age.