Hill’s subject was movement on a continental scale: freight, settlers, crops and the markets that could sustain a railway. His writing treats transport as the foundation of economic development.
Published in 1910, Highways of Progress is the mature statement of the man remembered as the Empire Builder: a reflection on agriculture, commerce, irrigation, waterways, conservation, natural resources and the productive future of a continental nation.
The railway builder’s view gives coherence to the account and also defines its limits. The country appears through the productive future he believed it could support.
Explore the life and work
Origins and early years
Born in Canada in 1838, Hill moved to St Paul at seventeen. Work in river transport and trade preceded his rise in railways.
The course of a life
The Great Northern’s transcontinental line was completed in 1893. Hill’s business joined the construction of routes to the cultivation of traffic along them.
The literary work
Highways of Progress sets out the mature industrialist’s arguments about land, agriculture, transport and national resources. It is a programme as well as a record of experience.
The legacy
Hill’s writing reveals how a builder of infrastructure imagined the territory his enterprise crossed. Its practical detail makes that ambition tangible.
