Samuel Hill - Enterprises

Enterprises

After leaving the employ of his father-in-law J.J. Hill, Sam Hill undertook a variety of business ventures and other projects, with varied results. 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, he was able to sell the company's gas facilities to the consolidated Seattle Lighting Company in 1904 on favorable terms. Another venture into utilities was less successful: the Home Telephone Company of Portland, Oregon 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 bondholders—Hill himself was the largest of these—ultimately received 70 cents on the dollar. Another business failure of his was the Deep Water Coal and Iron Company in Alabama. At the end of his life, the shares in this last enterprise were worthless, due in part to the Great Depression.

A more successful, if more modest, undertaking was a golf course and a large but simple restaurant—basically, an early entry into fast food—at Semiahmoo just north of the U.S.-Canada border and his Peace Arch. It did not hurt that, being on the Canadian side, the restaurant could serve alcoholic beverages during Prohibition in the United States.

Taken as a whole, the attempt to create Maryhill was one of Hill's least successful ventures. Involving an investment of at least US$600,000, it never paid back in any significant measure.