James J. Hill arrived in St. Paul in 1856 at age 17, born in 1838 near Rockwood outside Toronto, Canada, and after reaching the Mississippi River town with no money, he found work as a shipping clerk in a riverside warehouse. Although he had left school at 14 after his father died, he became an avid reader, a keen observer, and a rapid learner in business. Over the next twenty years he established himself as a leading dealer in wood, helped develop coal mining in Iowa and iron ore in northern Minnesota, traded in Canada, built steamboats for use on the Red River, and learned the northern territory by traveling to Fort Garry by foot, horseback, stagecoach, and dog sled. In 1878, at age 40, he and four other investors bought the St. Paul and Pacific railroad, whose track extended only as far as Sauk Rapids and Breckenridge, and renamed it the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba. Construction to extend the line to the Pacific Ocean began at Minot, North Dakota, in 1887, and Hill was known for personally supervising work with the construction crews. The railroad was renamed the Great Northern in 1888, and by 1893 it had reached Puget Sound with the shortest route, the flattest grades, the straightest track, and the longest trains, allowing the lowest rates. In 1896, Hill and his investors acquired the bankrupt Northern Pacific railroad, helping make St. Paul the transportation center of the Upper Midwest. He expanded further by adding Great Lakes ships in 1892, building large ocean-going ships for Pacific trade routes to the Orient in 1915, acquiring banks in 1912 to form the First National Bank of St. Paul, and purchasing a St. Paul newspaper and an art collection. He married Mary Theresa Mehagen in 1867, and they had 10 children, nine of whom lived to adulthood. Hill died on May 29, 1916, at age 77, and on the day of his funeral every train on the thousands of miles of his railroads stopped for five minutes in his honor.