Great Northern Railway

James J. Hill's Great Adventure

The epic completion of Great Northern Railway's transcontinental line to the Pacific in 1893 and the creation of BN some 77 years later were in a very real sense the fulfillment of one man's dreams. That man was James Jerome Hill, "The Empire Builder." GN was begun in 1857 as the Minnesota & Pacific Railroad Company when the Minnesota legislature, eager for rails in its territory, granted a charter to "construct a railroad in the direction of the Pacific." In 1862, the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad Company acquired the rights to the railroad after they had been forfeited to the state. The St. Paul & Pacific ultimately died the same death, and after foreclosure in 1879, the properties were reorganized as the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Company, with St. Paul businessman James J. Hill its general manager.

The expansion of the railroad in Minnesota and into Dakota Territory continued at a steady pace, and by the close of 1885 the system of main and branch lines had grown to 1,470 miles. It has been said of other sections of the West that they were settled from the ox cart; "Hill Country" was settled from the boxcar. Hill laid his rails first, then labored tirelessly to create traffic for his trains. The success for his plans depended upon quick and sound colonization.

Having sold his country, it was up to him to "make it good" after the settler moved in. So he started showing the farmers how to improve their methods, and became an authority on agriculture in the process. Hill was an advocate of soil diversification; he introduced improved strains of seed; and he established experimental farms. The formula enabled Hill to expand his railroad's mileage rapidly without land grants or government subsidies of any kind, other than the original grant of the Minnesota & Pacific.

In September 1889 the name of the railroad was changed to Great Northern Railway Company. At the close of 1892, only a seven-mile gap remained in what was once referred to as "Hill's Folly." On January 6, 1893, in the towering Cascades near Scenic, Washington, the final spike was driven, and GN became the second railroad to link Puget Sound with the upper Midwest.

In 1896, Hill, who became known as the "Empire Builder" because of his ability to create prosperous businesses, negotiated an agreement with Nippon Yusen Kaisha, then the largest steamship line in the Pacific, resulting in the establishment of service between Seattle and Oriental ports. It was a bold challenge to the established commerce between Europe and the Orient, and marked the beginning of Seattle's ascendancy as a world port. GN, through the years to the merger that created BN, continued to earn recognition as one of the preeminently progressive railroads in the nation.