Store owner in Arizona: Sam Hill was also a mercantile store owner who offered a vast and diverse inventory of goods. People began using the term "what in the Sam Hill is that?"
Among these company agents was a man named Samuel W. Hill. Sam was a geologist, surveyor, and mining engineer and had considerable power in the Keweenaw." According to author Ellis W. Courter, Samuel Hill "was an adventurer, explorer, miner, and surveyor.
That opera features a demon named Samiel, and Sokol suggested that Sam Hill is a variation on that name. Samiel could easily become Sam Hill, and the dates work—at least until someone unearths a use that antedates 1825—but Occam’s razor suggests that a variation on hell is a more parsimonious explanation.
Surveyor in Michigan: A possible origin for the phrase "Sam Hill" is the surveyor Samuel W. Hill (1819–1889), associated with the Keweenaw Peninsula area. Hill allegedly used such foul language that his name became a euphemism for swear words. In the words of Charles Eschbach, "Back in the 1850s the Keweenaw's copper mining boom was underway.
Hill’s interests were all over the board. He was a true Renaissance man graduating from both Haverford College near Philadelphia and Harvard a year later – 1879. Hill began his career as a lawyer in Minneapolis. After a couple of successful court wins against James J.
In 1909, Hill had Lancaster design a road leading up from his proposed town site in the Gorge to the north and the Klickitat County seat in Goldendale. Utilizing hairpin turns – 12 with an additional 13 curves – Lancaster built a road descending 850 feet over several miles at a grade of 5%.
Backtracking to 1907, Sam Hill bought large areas of ground around the small settlement of Columbus, also known as Columbia. He hoped to build a town he hoped to become an important center of the Inland Northwest. His original intention was to attract Quakers to take up settlement here, but Sam was the only Quaker to stay.
The most memorable monument to Samuel Hill lies a few miles to the west of his hoped-for town, the Maryhill Museum . Hill described the home serving as “a good, comfortable and substantial farmhouse.” He also said, “I expect this house to be here for a thousand years after I am gone.” thoughts not quite in line with the idea of a mere farmhouse.