The passing of a pioneer railroad man
John Marion Hill, conductor of Washington’s first train and pillar of early Walla Walla banking, dies at 54.
The story, cleaned up
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John Marion Hill, one of Walla Walla’s most highly honored citizens, passed from life this morning at his home after a lingering illness. The immediate cause of death was gangrene. Born in Lafayette, Oregon, in 1849, Hill arrived in Walla Walla in 1872 to work for Dr. D. S. Baker. He served as conductor of the first train on the Walla Walla and Columbia River Railroad and later managed the city's first street railway. In recent years, he was a director at the Baker-Boyer National Bank and served on the city council and as a county commissioner. He leaves behind his wife, Lucinda, and three surviving children.
“In business affairs Mr. Hill was alert, reliable and trustworthy to a fault.”
John Marion Hill was a key figure in the infrastructure that built early Walla Walla, from the first regional railroads to the streetcar lines that defined the town's expansion. His obituary serves as a ledger of the region's transition from an 1840s frontier to an incorporated turn-of-the-century city.
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