What the Sam Hill...?

There was a man named Sam Hill who believed in the future of good roads. You may have heard that exclamation of, “What in the Sam Hill…?” That was considered a polite substitute for using the word, “hell”, and came along before this Sam Hill was born.

Hill was a mover and shaker of the early 20th century, making millions in railroads. He knew royalty and other world leaders and traveled the world to learn about how to make good roads… but a darker side was that his home life was not idyllic.

Some of the projects that Sam Hill was behind include:
- The Pacific Highway from Canada to Mexico (US 99 and US 101)
- The Peace Arch on the US and Canadian Border
- Maryhill Museum
- Attempting to start a Quaker community called Maryhill
- Running a phone company in Portland, Oregon
- A copy of Stonehenge as a Memorial to Klickitat county soldiers who had died in World War I
- The Columbia River Highway (US 30)
- The first paved road in Washington State.

He was such a good roads advocate, the US 97 Columbia River Bridge was named after him. The bridge is within sight of Maryhill and the Stonehenge Memorial.

There’s too much of Sam Hill to put in one blog, so I’ll be writing more about Sam Hill and his love of roads, later.

Can't wait for the next Sam Hill blog? Read your own Sam Hill book. The Prince of Castle Nowhere or Sam Hill's Peace Arch.

Links
- Maryhill Museum on Sam Hill
- Sam Hill from HistoryLink.org
- Where the Sam Hill is Maryhill?