thumb|upright|Sketch of Hill in 1889, the year after he married
thumb | right | [[Maryhill Stonehenge replica and war memorial.]]
Samuel Hill (13 May 1857 – 26 February 1931), was an American businessman, lawyer, railroad executive, and advocate of good roads. He substantially influenced the Pacific Northwest region's economic development in the early 20th century.
His projects include the Peace Arch, a monument to 100 years of peace between the United States and Canada, on the border between Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Columbia, and the Maryhill Museum of Art. Although his promotion of paved modern roads is possibly his greatest legacy, he is now best remembered for building the Stonehenge replica in Maryhill, Washington.
Early life and education
Sam Hill was born into a Quaker family in Deep River, North Carolina. His family was displaced by the American Civil War and Sam grew up after the war in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Hill graduated from Haverford College in 1878 (also his father's alma mater). At Haverford he studied Latin, Greek, French, and German as well as mathematics, science, English literature, logic, rhetoric, and political science.
He attended Harvard University for a year to receive a second bachelor's degree in 1879. At Harvard he continued his Latin and history ("Colonial History of America" under Henry Cabot Lodge) and studied forensics and philosophy ("German Philosophy of the Present Day" and "Advanced Political Economy").
Early career and relocation to Seattle
After Sam Hill graduated from Haverford College in 1878 and Harvard University in 1879, he returned to Minneapolis to practice law. A number of successful lawsuits against the Great Northern Railway attracted the attention of the railway's general manager James J. Hill, who hired Sam to represent the railway. In 1888 Sam Hill married James Hill's eldest daughter Mary.
For over a decade, Hill played an important role in his father-in-law's business endeavors, both at the Great Northern and as president of the Minneapolis Trust Company. However, around 1900 they had some type of falling out, the nature and degree of which is unclear; it is not even clear whether the falling out was over business matters, Sam and Mary's difficult marriage, or possible early symptoms of Sam's manic tendencies. In any event, the break was not a sharp one: The two men continued a friendly correspondence in business matters.
After a 1901 journey across Russia on the then not-quite-completed Trans-Siberian Railway, Hill settled in 1902 in Seattle, Washington, where he had major interests in the Seattle Gas and Electric Company, which was focused mainly in the coal gas business.
Hill had announced his intention to settle in Seattle in December 1900, but his wife Mary did not take well to the Northwest and moved back to Minneapolis after six months in Seattle, with their two children and without Sam. He stayed in Seattle and embarked on a number of ventures in the Pacific Northwest.
World traveller
thumb|Hill as depicted in [[Sunset (magazine)|Sunset, The Pacific Monthly, in 1913.]]
Sam Hill was an "inveterate globetrotter".
He was fluent in German, French, and Italian, Hill made at least fifty separate trips to Europe in the course of his lifetime and visited Japan nine times between 1897 and 1922. All of Hill's extensive travels were during an era when transportation was limited to surface vehicles and vessels.
In the early 20th century, Hill was the only American member of the Geographic Society of Germany. He continually gathered harbor depth soundings and information about ocean temperatures in order to map ocean currents. He had this information added to high-quality custom-made globes of German manufacture repeatedly commissioned from 1902–1914, which Hill gave as gifts.
Among the friends Hill made in his travels was King Albert I of Belgium, who made him a Commander of the Crown and Honorary Belgian Consul for Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Hill and his friend Joseph Joffre (the Marshal of France) made an around-the-world trip together in 1922. He also befriended Queen Marie of Romania, who granted him the Order of the Crown in the Degree of the Grand Cross. Her 1926 visit to the United States was largely at his invitation.
Enterprises
After leaving the employ of his father-in-law J.J. Hill in 1900, Sam Hill undertook a variety of business ventures and other projects, with varied results.
Utility companies
His Seattle Gas and Electric Company was continually in hard-fought rivalry with other utilities, most notably head-on competition with the Citizens' Light and Power Company, whose leadership included several defectors from Hill's company. Ultimately, after a price war, Hill was able to sell the company's gas facilities to the consolidated Seattle Lighting Company in 1904 on favorable terms.
Other ventures into utilities was less successful: The Home Telephone Company of Portland pioneered rotary dial telephones in the region, but ultimately this independent telephone company lost out to the better-integrated Bell System. Its stockholders were wiped out, and its bondholders – Hill himself was the largest of these – ultimately received 70 cents on the dollar.
The Deep Water Coal and Iron Company in Alabama was another business failure. At the end of his life the shares in this last enterprise were worthless, due in part to the Great Depression.
Maryhill community
Starting in 1907, Sam Hill bought up most of what had been a small settlement called "Columbia" or "Columbus" near the Columbia River in Klickitat County, Washington, which he envisioned as a new community in the Inland Empire. He named the parcel Maryhill, after his wife and his daughter Mary – neither of whom ever actually lived there.
His original plan was to develop it as a farming community of Quakers, but Sam was the only known Quaker resident.
Taken as a whole, his attempt to create the Maryhill community was one of Hill's least successful investments: He spent at least US$600,000 that never paid back in any significant measure.