After working as a clerk in Kentucky (during which he learned bookkeeping), Hill decided to permanently move to the United States and settled in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the age of 18.

During the winter months when the Mississippi River was frozen and steamboats could not run, Hill started bidding on other contracts and won several.

Hill teamed up with Norman Kittson (the man he had merged steamboat businesses with), Donald Smith,[6] George Stephen and John Stewart Kennedy.

If the federal government believed that the railroads were making too much profit, they might see this as an opportunity to force lowering of the railway tariff rates.

"[8] Hill got what he wanted, and in January 1893 his Great Northern Railway, running from St. Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington — a distance of more than 1,700 miles (2,700 km) — was completed.

[10] In 1898 Hill purchased control of large parts of the Mesabi Range iron mining district in Minnesota, along with its rail lines.

Hill also invested in founding schools and churches for these communities and promoted a variety of progressive techniques to ensure they prospered.

[12] This "Dakota Boom" peaked in 1882 as 42,000 immigrants, largely from northern Europe, poured into the Red River Valley running through the region.

[13] The rapidly increasing settlement in North Dakota's Red River Valley along the Minnesota border between 1871 and 1890 was a major example of large-scale "bonanza" farming.

In order to ensure that he did not lose his patronage during the crisis, Hill lowered rail tariff shipping rates for farmers, gave credit to many of the businesses he owned so they could continue paying their workers, and started a "10 dollar trip" (equal to $339.11 today) for immigrants.

Hill saved money by repeatedly cutting wages, made possible by a time of deflation when prices were falling generally.

Hill sent emissaries to the Pacific who found that Japan had the most potential in the market of "Oriental Trade," and he decided to capitalize on this opportunity.

With these friendly relations established, Hill managed to secure the industrializing Japanese order for 15,000 tons of rails against competition from England and Belgium.

[17] Leonard says that after 1900 Hill exhibited poor business judgment regarding one Canadian subsidiary, the Vancouver, Westminster and Yukon Railway Company (VW&Y).

Quietly, Harriman began buying stock in Northern Pacific with the intention of gaining control of Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy.

He was within 40,000 shares of control when Hill learned of Harriman's activities and quickly contacted J. P. Morgan, who ordered his men to buy everything they could get their hands on.

The winners of that truce were Hill and Morgan, who immediately formed the Northern Securities Company with the aim of tying together their three major rail lines.

As the Hill-Morgan alliance formed the Northern Securities Company, Theodore Roosevelt became president and turned his energies against the great trusts that were monopolizing trade.

This ended Hill's ability to maintain competitive rates in Asian countries and in the subsequent two years American trade with Japan and China dropped 40% (or $41 million).

[14] Mary Theresa Hill died in 1922 and was buried next to her husband by the shore of Pleasant Lake on their North Oaks farm.

In order to generate business for his railroad, Hill encouraged European immigrants to settle along his line, often paying for Russian and Scandinavian settlers to travel from Europe.

To promote settlement and revenue for his rail business, Hill experimented with agriculture and worked to hybridize Russian wheat for Dakota soil and weather conditions.

He also ran model experimental farms in Minnesota, such as North Oaks, to develop superior livestock and crop yields for the settlers locating near his railroads.

An enthusiastic conservationist, Hill was invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to a governors' conference on conservation of natural resources, and later appointed to a lands commission.

Near the end of his life, Hill played what a recent biographer, Albro Martin, called his "last and greatest role."

To that end, Hill was a major figure in the effort launched by J.P. Morgan to float the Anglo-French Bond drive of 1915, which allowed the Allies to purchase much-needed foodstuffs and other supplies.

Concomitantly, the resulting trade in munitions with England and France carried the United States from a depression in 1914 to boom years in 1915 and 1916.

The introduced crop weed in Western US wheat-growing areas Sisymbrium altissimum also has a common name "Jim Hill Mustard", after the belief by farmers that it was spread from contaminated seed leaking out of railway stock along the railroads he controlled.

[26] In 1929, the Great Northern Railway inaugurated a long-distance passenger train extending from Chicago to Seattle, and named it the Empire Builder in his honor.

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