February 2021
Volume One — Collector’s Edition
PRESORTED STANDARD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT NO. 9
This is the second in a series of articles by the Hill Farm Historical Society that focus on significant people and events in the history of our community. Jim Hill established the farm in 1883, which through his son Louis and grandson Louis Jr., eventually became the city of North Oaks.
CIRCLE PINES, MN
The James J. Hill Years 1883-1916
NORTH OAKS NEWS 4779 Bloom Avenue White Bear Lake, MN 55110
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EARLY YEARS While the period 1883-1916 was the time Jim Hill was involved with the North Oaks Farm, you can’t fully appreciate Mr. Hill unless you look at his entire life, and what a life it was! Jim Hill was born on a small farm near Rockwood Ontario on September 16, 1838. Rockwood is about 200 miles northeast of Detroit, 50 miles west of Toronto. Hill’s early childhood years were spent on the farm where he was born. The family was described as “impoverished” according to one biography I read. I am sure he had the normal list of farm chores any healthy young kid would have had. Besides being a farmer, his father, also named James, worked as a hired hand on farms in the area. When Jim was 10, his father sold the farm and moved the family to Rockwood, where he opened an inn and tavern, broadening young Jim’s business exposure. The family's move enabled Hill to attend Rockwood Academy, where Mr. Wetherald, the Quaker schoolmaster, recognized and encouraged the boy's talents and abilities and permitted him to attend on a scholarship. Jim’s father passed away on Christmas day 1852 when Jim was only 14. As the oldest child, he had to find a job to help out at home. He left school and worked in stores in Rockwood and the neighboring town of Guelph. He helped his mother until the spring of 1856, when, at age 17, Hill headed to the United States, determined to be an animal trapper and fur trader. After a brief tour of the east-central part of the U.S., he headed northwest, arriving in St. Paul, Minnesota Territory, in July 1856 just before his 18th birthday. The city was booming at the time and would reach a population of 10,000 by 1860. In 1856, Hill took a job as a bookkeeper in a warehouse on the levee on the Mississippi River. It is said that he arrived with something like $500 in his pocket, which would be an extraordinary amount of cash for anyone at that time, let alone a young man his age.
James J. Hill - 1858
Most people’s knowledge of Jim Hill starts with his railroad business, but that wasn’t until 1879, 23 years after his arrival in St. Paul. So, how did he amass the wealth to buy a railroad by the time he was 41 years old, having come from an “impoverished” background? That’s the rest of the story.
FROM EMPLOYEE TO BUSINESSMAN When Hill was working in the warehouse, he recognized that it was a seasonal business. When the river froze, and the shipping stopped, he pursued opportunities that others overlooked. Having some cash in his pocket put him in a good position to pursue his business ideas. Firewood was the only fuel available in Minnesota (no oil or coal) and it was most in demand in the winter when the warehouses were empty. He could see the vast amount of land being cleared for farming in the surrounding area, and the farmers needed cash, so he made a deal with farmers to buy firewood from them, which grew into a big business. He added coal when it was economical enough to transport it from coal producing states. From the time of his arrival to his venture into railroad ownership, Hill worked at various positions in addition to the fuel business already mentioned. He served as an agent for both the Dubuque and St. Paul and Northwestern Packet Companies (moving people and cargo by river boat), a station agent for the St. Paul and Pacific RR, a fur trader, and a steamship line owner with partners Norman Kittson, Chauncy Griggs, Alexander Griggs and E.F. Holcombe. And, oh by the way, managed to find time to court and marry his wife Mary Mehegan in 1867 and start a family. Jim and Mary eventually had 10 children.
James J. Hill’s St. Paul Warehouse ca. 1866 From this you can see Hill started to amass his fortunes in various commodity and transportation businesses before ever owning a railroad. When you look at Hill’s work experiences, by the time he was 40 years old, he had experience in the hospitality, farming, retail, warehousing, transportation and fuel industries— a pretty diverse background. In addition to his life experiences, Jim Hill was an avid reader and a self-taught expert in many areas during his lifetime.
Mary Hill
RAILROAD ENTREPRENEUR In 1879, Hill made his first venture into railroad ownership when he and partners George Stephen, Donald A. Smith, John Kennedy and Norman W. Kittson purchased the St. Paul and Pacific RR. As he entered the railroad business Hill was also acquiring significant amounts of farm land. He knew there were better ways of farming, some unique to this northern tier of states. He saw the need to develop “experimental farms” and explore
cutting-edge agricultural practices that would improve farming for the immigrants that were flooding into Minnesota and the northern plains. James J. Hill reasoned that a railroad would not succeed unless the residents in its territory prospered. People were needed to live and work on the land near the railroad and to use the railroad to receive supplies and to send their agricultural products to market.
Hill made an offer to the thousands of European immigrants and their families who were arriving on the East coast. Induced by promises of farmland at little or no cost, Hill paid the train fare for hundreds of these immigrant families to come to the upper Midwest and northern plains and settle along the Great Northern Railway. Colonization progressed and traffic grew. What was good for the new farmers would also be good for his railroad.
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Immigrants on their way to new homes EXPERIMENTAL FARMER Hill’s land purchases started in 1880, when he acquired 160-acres of land on Lake Minnetonka’s Crystal Bay. He named it Hillier Farm. Hill set his mind to use the farm to breed stock that would improve the cattle available to farmers along his railroad lines. When he later purchased the North Oaks Farm, he sold the Hillier farm and transferred the livestock to the North Oaks Farm. In December of 1881, Hill purchased land in the fertile Red River Valley near Hallock, Minnesota. The 45,000 acres of land he acquired became known as Humboldt Farm and was run as a basic bonanza farm (large acreage focused on crop production). Eventually, 3,000-acres of Humboldt would be split off and
managed by Hill’s youngest son, Walter, under the name Northcote Farm. In 1883 Hill bought 3,300-acres of land in northern Ramsey County for $50,000. This investment would expand to nearly 5,000 acres by the turn of the century and serve not only as a research farm, but also as Hill’s country estate. It became known as the North Oaks Farm. So, between 1880-83 Hill purchased a total of 50,000+ acres of farmland in Minnesota. Hill quickly hired 347 men to work on the construction of 35 farm buildings on his new North Oaks Farm. By June 1884 farm operations were also starting, with 23 men and one woman, the dairy operator, working on the farm.
Hill Farm Workers near Pleasant Lake 1906 In spite of developing a “bonanza farm”, Hill recognized that the smaller farms he advocated for the new immigrants needed a breed of cattle that produced adequate amounts of milk to meet the family needs but also yielded a high quality of meat. Hill used the term “dual purpose” to define these cattle, and the shorthorn breed was proven to best meet that requirement. They would give the family a continuous supply of milk and butter, and the male calves would provide the family beef for their own needs, and some for market.
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Brandsby’s Coming Star on the North Oaks Farm circa 1900
Shorthorn Bull on North Oaks Farm In order to bring a higher quality of cattle to the northern plains, Hill purchased the best stock of European beef and dairy cattle for the North Oaks Farm. These were not just good cattle, but the best money could buy. Hill paid $5,000 for one bull. Contrast that to the $50,000 he paid for the entire farm a few years earlier. The North Oaks Farm gained a reputation for breeding exceptional beef cattle. Each year his
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Aberdeen Angus and Shorthorn cows would travel by train to Chicago to take part in the “Fat Stock Show”. The cattle won several prizes at the show over the years. In 1889 his Aberdeen Angus brought home $700 in prizes from Chicago. Over a period of three years, Hill bought some 800 head of cattle, sheep and hogs for his North Oaks Farm, and ultimately donated 7,000 of their male offspring to farmers in 30 counties in Minnesota,
North Dakota and Montana with the provision that they were to be available for breeding by all farmers in the county. “It cost me, for cattle and hogs that I gave away, somewhere in the neighborhood of $150,000. It wasn’t a railroad matter. It was my own effort to help them.” James J. Hill (Pyle, p.367, c. 1885)
The North Oaks Farm also experimented with finding the best feed for the animals. Hill determined that root vegetables such as turnips, beets, and rutabaga, combined with hay, oilcake, and corn provided the most nutritious winter feed for the animals causing the cattle to gain additional weight that added an average profit of $2 per head. Root crops provide a lot of biomass per acre, have a short growing season, store well and provide a nutritious food source. They are grown as far north as southern Canada and are still grown in England, some parts of North America and Australia for livestock feed. One of Hill’s most successful ventures was his Ayrshire dairy cows. Once he proved the validity of the Shorthorn “dual- purpose cow”, and experimented with Jerseys (highest in butterfat, lowest milk production) and Aberdeen Angus (great meat, lowest butter fat and milk production), he moved his focus to a higher production dairy animal. He received two awards from the international Ayrshire Breeders Association.
Hill Farm Buildings circa 1890 Why he did not use Holsteins in his experiment is not known. Maybe because they were a wellestablished breed and were a low butterfat cow as compared to the others. Before refrigeration, storing and transporting raw milk over anything but short distances was not practical, particularly in the summer. Butter was better for both storage and transport and was a high value item.
Ayrshire Bull - Duchrae Success on the North Oaks Farm circa 1900 The cost to maintain the North Oaks Farm, and pay the 40 men that worked there, was $28,000 in 1914, no doubt adding to why he favored this farm above the others. North Oaks also provided the Hill home in St. Paul with vegetables, fruit, milk, butter, eggs, meat and fresh flowers. A cart would make the trip First: The farmer must cultivate no more land than he can till thoroughly. It is much easier and more profitable to farm fewer acres well than many acres poorly.
from North Oaks to St. Paul each morning with the freshly harvested goods. Hill saw diversification on farms as essential to the successful farm. In his 1910 book “Highways of Progress” he stated three basic principles which expressed his views on the topic:
Second: There must be rotation of crops, the proper 3 to 5-year rotation of crops actually enriches the soil.
Third: There must be soil renovation by fertilizing; and the best fertilizer is that provided by nature itself barnyard manure. Diversity of animals to include cattle, poultry, hogs and sheep will help guard against low prices for any one and offer a more diverse source of meat (and eggs) for the family
Hill wrote articles and lectured frequently advocating that wheat farmers should rotate crops (wheat, hay, root crops, corn for example) to protect against a poor year for any single crop, and to raise livestock and use the manure to replenish nutrients in the soil. It all makes sense even today. To share his research and validate it in the various areas along his railroad, Hill had more than 1,000 five-acre plots he leased from farmers in the 1880s to conduct agricultural research. He shared the results by sending out special trains – advertised as “agricultural colleges on wheels.” Onboard experts were available to teach farmers about the latest developments in crop diversification, the use of cover crops to improve soil fertility, and livestock breeding. The northern plains offered a more challenging farm environment than that of the corn belt states from Ohio to Iowa that were the major crop area of the day. Rainfall across North Dakota and much of Montana is 20 inches or less per year (vs 30 inches in the Twin Cities) and they also have a shorter growing season. It was important to understand what would grow best in the areas along the Great Northern. Farming is always a risk due to wide variations in the weather. Some felt this area wasn’t fit for farming, at least the kind of farming they knew and understood. But in 2017 Washington, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota were among the top ten wheat producing states in the U.S.
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QUALITY OVER SPEED One other thing about Jim Hill that needs to be understood is that once the construction of the railroad continued beyond the western border of Minnesota, he built The Great Northern without the level of government assistance afforded to most other transcontinental railroads. His railroads were designed to last, and took the most efficient route across the northern U.S. to Seattle. One person played a key role in helping Hill build the most efficient railroad in the country; John Stevens, Hill’s surveyor and engineer amongst other things, located the Marias Pass in the Rockies and another in the Cascades which bears his name. These passes were key to the efficiency of the railroad through tough terrain. During his time with the Great Northern Stevens built over 1,000 miles of railroad. Stevens was then hired by Theodore Roosevelt at Hill’s recommendation and went on to play a key role in the design of the Panama Canal. Hill would rather do it right, than do it fast. That is what led to the Great Northern being the most efficient railroad in the country with the lowest rates. He was interested in developing the nation as well as building the railroad. At the same time Jim Hill was buying and developing farms he was also building railroad track to the west coast, completing the route to Puget Sound in 1893.
The progression of the Great Northern Railway 1879-1893 FINAL REST James J. Hill died May 29th, 1916 in St. Paul at the age of 78 and was buried on his beloved North Oaks Farm. Mary Hill passed away on November 22, 1921 at the age of 75 and was buried beside Jim. The park-like setting of their grave-site on the north shore of Pleasant Lake, now Mary Hill Park, is shown below at the time of Hill’s funeral. After Jim Hill’s death, Mary had quietly given the North Oaks Farm to Louis, unbeknownst to the other siblings, feeling strongly he was the one to best determine the future of the farm. There was no longer a need for the farm to serve as an agricultural research farm, so the farming operations gradually declined during the 1920s and 30s. By 1944 it was becoming difficult to maintain the burial site on the North Oaks Farm so family members had Jim and Mary reinterred at the newly opened Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights. Subsequently numerous Hill family members including Louis and Louis Jr. and their wives were buried in the “Hill Lot” at this beautiful cemetery.
James J. Hill circa 1916
James J. and Mary Theresa Hill Burial Site - 1916
James J. and Mary Theresa Hill Burial Site - 2020
Louis Hill had a vision for the farm, and that is the “rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey used to say. More on that in the upcoming months.