Road Warriors Samuel Lancaster, Sam Hill, J.C. Potter, and Amos Benson on the Columbia River Highway, circa 1915.
Famous in his time, Sam Hill of the Pacific Northwest is perhaps remarkably distinguished for his present-day obscurity. The Sam Hill in question is not the Sam Hill referenced in “What in the Sam Hill are you doing?” That honor has been attributed to a slate of Sam Hills, none of whom is this Sam Hill. The formerly notable Sam Hill was a visionary businessman, arguably manic, who over a 50-year career worked for gas and phone companies and coal mines and had a hand in the expansion of the Great Northern railroad into the West. Marrying the daughter of railroad boss J.J. Hill (no relation) in 1888 didn’t hurt Sam Hill’s prospects. But later in life Hill became more enamored of two things: the rugged splendor of the Pacific Northwest and the creation of paved roads that would allow travelers—and businesspeople—to enjoy and exploit that splendor. “Good roads are more than my hobby,” he said. “They are my religion.” Born in 1857 into a prosperous Quaker family living near Henderson, North Carolina, Hill was the fourth child of a multifaceted business leader and Underground Railroad collaborator. The family moved to Minneapolis in 1865. Upon graduating from Haverford College in 1878, Hill spent time at Harvard collecting another B.A., a law degree, and more friends and connections than good grades. He didn’t need As. He had a bottomless interest in expanding his horizon—and others’ horizons, as well. Over his lifetime, he became fluent in four languages and
BY SARAH RICHARDSON
traveled to Europe and Asia so often that in a single year he might make two trips to Japan, a journey then easier than one into the interior of the United States, which lacked a national road system. In fact, a 1907 road trip on Alpine highways and along Germany’s Rhine River provided Hill with a vision he wrestled into reality: the Columbia River Scenic Highway, which snaked along towering buttes and waterfalls, rising and falling in gentle loops that allowed vehicles of the day, which didn’t top 12 miles per hour, to navigate the inclines. The highway, merely one of Hill’s Northwestern legacies, was by far the most impressive, stretching 74 miles at its completion in 1922. Traveling that part of the Columbia River’s bank had been so difficult that immigrants on the Oregon Trail often hopped into boats for the last leg down the Columbia. Leaving his father-in-law’s employ and moving to Seattle in 1902, Hill spent years promoting this area as
COLLECTION OF MARYHILL MUSEUM OF ART
HILL’S COUNTRY
16 AMERICAN HISTORY
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