— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

While the portrayal of Jay Gatsby is widely known throughout the United States, the real-life individual Fitzgerald compared him to has nearly vanished from the pages of history.

After 21 years in production, Great Northern Filmworks is trying to change all of that with the release of its four-episode documentary series, “The Empire Builder: James J. Hill and The Great Northern Railway.”

Produced and directed by filmmakers Stephen Sadis and Kyle Kegley, the documentary captures the epic life of one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs. As transportation historian Carlos Schwantes states in the film’s opening, “I think what he did could only be described in one word: audacious.”

The Gassman Coulee trestle was completed in May 1887.

To bring this production to life, Sadis first wrote a one-hour script in 2001 but was unable to raise production funds through grants. In 2008, he began to underwrite the film himself, and with the help of Kegley, a two-hour script was written and nine interviews with scholars and historians were filmed. The project was shelved again until 2017, when they established Great Northern Filmworks, a non-profit organization. Over the next five years, a shoestring budget was raised, the script evolved into a four-hour series and another 17 interviews were filmed. Thousands of hours of editing later, the documentary was finished and released on Sept. 30.

Nationally recognized historian and Bismark resident Clay Jenkinson was the

documentary’s narrator.

When the railroad ushered in one of the most transformative eras in American history, James J. Hill emerged as its unrivaled leader. Building a transportation empire that stretched across North America and to the Orient, he was a catalyst for the agriculture, timber and mining industries of the West.

“He not only changed trade;” said U.S. Economics Professor Burton Folsom, “he changed the way the world worked.”

Hill was unlike any other railroad owner of his day. He was deeply interested in the development of the United States and surprisingly, was an early advocate for the sustainable use of our nation’s resources, even mentioning “climate change” in a speech in 1909.

In 1878, Hill organized a syndicate to purchase a local Minnesota railroad that had gone bankrupt three times. Over the span of 15 years, he blanketed the Midwest’s Red River Valley with lines, then pointed his rails west, crossing the Rockies and Cascades to reach Seattle. What was once derided as “two streaks of rust and a right of way,” Hill built into an expansive transportation network that continues today as the BNSF Railway.

Without the benefit of federal land grants, Hill had to build his transcontinental differently than the other railroad barons. Seeking advantages from efficiencies, he demanded “the lowest grade, least curvature and shortest distance possible.” He also had to create the market to feed his railroad, dispersing agents around the country and throughout Europe to attract tens of thousands of immigrants and settlers to the West. Hill considered farmers to be the “backbone of prosperity,” and used his influence and personal wealth to teach them the latest practices, incentivize better crops as well as supplying farmers with critical short-term loans.

As the pendulum swung from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era, Hill was a lightning rod for the most impactful issues of the day: immigration, government regulations, market manipulation, trust-busting, Native American displacement, environmental stewardship as well as financing America’s allies during The Great War.

The trailer as well as information on how to stream or purchase the DVD of the documentary can be found at: www.greatnorthernfilmworks.com.

ND stories in documentary

Stories included in the documentary relating to North Dakota include:

• James J. Hill blanketed the Red River Valley with spur lines connecting dozens of towns, enabling farmers to get their crops to market.

• Out of spite, Hill bypassed the town of Caledonia, and built to Comstock which was later renamed Hillsboro

• By 1883, Hill’s line reached Devil’s Lake.

• Great Northern agents dispatched to Germany and Scandinavian countries brought a wave of immigrants to the region. Pamphlets touting the region as the “Nile of the North,” lured thousands of settlers.

• From 1870 to 1890, a period known as The Great Dakota Boom, the Dakota Territory’s population grew from 2,000 to 190,000, more than half of whom were immigrants.

• By 1890, Germans and Scandinavians accounted for 44% of the Midwest population, forever altering the ethnic mix of the region.

• By the end of the 1886 construction season, Hill’s line was built 120 miles to north central Dakota Territory.

• The 600-hundred-man construction crew made camp there, calling their tent town, “The Magic City.” Over the next five months, tents were replaced by houses and buildings, the population increased to 5,000 and the town was named Minot after Hill’s second vice president, Henry Minot.