Canadian-American railroad executive James Jerome Hill (1838-1916), nicknamed the "Empire Builder," was perhaps more significant to the framing of the empire of the Pacific Northwest than any other individual. He built the Great Northern Railroad and also controlled the Northern Pacific and Burlington railroads. Mr. Hill's decisions about rail routes and station stops had the power to turn fledging communities into robust cities. In 1893 he pushed the Great Northern Railway line across the Cascade Mountains to its terminus in Seattle, and opened the King Street Station in Seattle in 1906, offering rail passengers a gracious entry into the city still in use today. In this image, James Hill sits in an open car in front of the Vancouver, WA train station. This may have been around the same time he delivered an address to a crowd of 90,000 on June 1, 1909, the opening day of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. To recognize his impact on the economic of the Pacific Northwest, a statue of Mr. Hill by Finn Haakon Frolich (1868-1947) was installed on the AYPE fairgrounds (held on the University of Washington campus) and continues to stand outside More Hall as of 2019.

Embossed in lower right corner: J. E. Anderson, Vancouver, Wash. Caption information source: "Hill, James J. (1838-1916)," by Paula Becker, HistoryLink.org Essay 8115. Caption information source: https://content.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/aype/opening.html

• Subjects (LCTGM): Business people--American--Washington (State)--Seattle; Portrait photographs
• People: Hill, James J. (James Jerome), 1838-1916