About James J. Hill
James Jerome Hill was an American railway entrepreneur. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains, and the Pacific Northwest in the United States. Because of the size of this region and the economic dominance exerted by the Hill lines, Hill became known during his lifetime as "The Empire Builder", and died in 1916 with a fortune of about $63 million. His former home, James J. Hill House, is now a museum in Saint Paul, Minnesota. During this period, Hill began to work for himself for the first time. In the winter, when the Mississippi River was frozen and steamboats could not run, Hill started bidding on other contracts and won several. When the Civil War broke out, he wanted to join the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment, but due to blindness in one eye he did not pass medical inspection.
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