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RAMSEY COUNTY Spring, 1990 Volume 25, Number 1 A Publication of the Ramsey County Historical Society James J. Hill’s yacht, the Wacouta of St. Paul. See Page 4. RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Executive Director Daniel J. Hoisington Editor Virginia Brainard Kunz RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS Gregory K. Page Chairman of the Board William S. Fallon CONTENTS President Richard Lee 3 L etters First Vice President Anne Cowie Wilson 4 Railroader as Yachtsman Second Vice President James J. Hill and the Yacht W acouta Robert Hess Thomas C. Buckley Secretary James P. Wicker 12 Eugene Debs, James J. Hill and the Great Northern Treasurer Railway’s Strike of 1894 John Costello, Joanne Englund, Deborah Tamara C. Truer Gelbach, Joan Grzywinski, Lorraine Hammerly, Craig Jilk, John M. Lindley, 14-15 St. Paul and the 1940s Revisited in Pictures Frank Marzitelli, Dr. Thomas B. Mega, Richard T. Murphy, Sr., Marvin Pertzik, 20 T he W acouta in Two World Wars Douglas Skor, Robert O. Straughn, Stephen Urion, Gary Woeltge, Laurie Zenner. 22 Book Reviews EDITORIAL BOARD 23 Cooper and Goodrich and the Famous Duel John M. Lindley, chairman; Thomas H. Boyd, Thomas C. Buckley, Charlton Dietz, 24 A Matter of Time Craig Jilk, Thomas J. Kelley, Dr. Thomas B. Mega. 27 What’s Historic about this Site? RAMSEY COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Commissioner Hal Norgard, chairman Publication of Ramsey County History is supported Commissioner Diane Ahrens in part by a gift from Clara M. Claussen and Frieda H. Claussen Commissioner John Finley Commissioner Ruby Hunt in memory of Henry H. Cowie, Jr. Commissioner Duane McCarty Commissioner Don Salverda Commissioner Warren Schaber Terry Schütten, executive director, Ramsey County A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT Ramsey County History is published quarterly by the Ramsey County Historical Society, 323 Landmark Center, 75 W. Fifth Street, elcome to the “new” Ramsey County History. In 1987 the St. Paul, Minn. 55102. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright, 1990, Ramsey County Historical WSociety’s Board of Directors established a task force to develop Society. ISBN Number 0-934294-00-3. All a strategic plan. One of the principal recommendations of that task rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced force was to publish our magazine on a quarterly basis. For that without written permission from the purpose an Editorial Board was established and as a result of their publisher. efforts over a two-year planning period, we are proud and happy to Design by: Don Leeper, Stanton Publication Services; Little & Company present to you, our members and our readers, this new, enlivened On the cover: The Wacouta, James J. Hill’s format. You will note the additional new features, such as “A Matter yacht, passing through the locks at the Sault of Time,” Letters to the Editor, book reviews, descriptions of St. Ste. Marie, seen in die background. Paul’s historic sites and other features. Acknowledgements: Except for Page 9, photographs with the articles on James J. Hill We hope you will enjoy this new format, and request your and the yacht Wacouta are from the James J. comments and reactions to it. We also would like to remind you that Hill Papers in the James J. Hill Reference Library, St. Paul, and used with the library’s we always are looking for manuscripts, for writers and particularly permission. Photographs on Pages 9, 12, 13 for reminiscences, those colorful and personal accounts of your and 27 are from the Minnesota Historical Society’s audio-visual collection. The experiences and memories of St. Paul and Ramsey County. If you photograph on Page 22 is from the Ramsey would like to contribute to our new magazine, just call the editor. County Historical Society’s photo collection. The photograph on Page 10 is from the Debs — William S. Fallon Foundation, Terre Haute, Indiana. 2 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Railroader As Yachtsman, James J. Hill and the Wacouta of Thomas C. Buckley omewhere around the turn of the century a wealthy, arrogant and steamboat companies. In the 1870s, before distrusted oilman named Henry Clay Pierce was considering the he went into railroading, he was in the purchase of a yacht. He asked New York financier and yachtsman steamboat business. His Red River Trans S portation Company eventually ran five John Pierpont Morgan, “How much does it cost to run a yacht?” Morgan steamboats and twenty barges between replied to the nouveau riche upstart, “You have no right to own a yacht if Breckenridge in western Minnesota and you have to ask that question.” Winnipeg, Manitoba. Morgan’s response became his most fa had secured control of another transconti In the 1880s his Lake Minnetonka mous quote and yachting’s most often nental, the Northern Pacific, and was busy Navigation Company operated a huge 300 quoted cliche. For some it also has become pushing settlement and economic develop foot excursion steamboat on the large lake a quick characterization of the attitude of ment of the great northwestern region of of the same name. In the 1880s and 1890s Americans of old money toward those of the nation that stretched from Minnesota to Hill’s shipping interests expanded to in newly acquired wealth, but for many more the Pacific. Not as well known then, and clude most of the upper Great Lakes with it has come to typify a style of conspicuous even less well known today, was the fact the creation of the Northern Steamship consumption seen as characteristic of very that throughout his transportation career Company. That company’s fleet of six rich Americans from the late 19th century he had been intimately associated with large freighters and two passenger steam to the present. waterborne transportation on rivers and ers ranged across America’s inland sea Nothing came to better signify arrival lakes. from Duluth to Buffalo, New York. By the among the super rich in the industrial age In the 1850s when he came to St. Paul end of the decade his maritime vision had than the possession of a steam powered he had worked with Mississippi river extended to contemplate passenger yacht like J. P. Morgan’s sleek black yachts. Morgan cruised the waters of the Hudson River and the East Coast in a suc cession of three yachts; each was larger than its predecessor, and each was named Corsair. Sailing those same waters of New York Harbor, Long Island Sound and the north east coast, in those same days, was another yacht almost as large as Morgan’s but owned by St. Paul railroad millionaire James Jerome Hill. The story of Hill and his yacht, the Wacouta, was in some ways similar but in other ways quite different than that of J. P. Morgan and the other big spending millionaires of the early 20th century. Its history provides an interesting glimpse into Hill’s day-to-day activities and the way he was a part of, and stood apart from, the spirit and style of Ameri ca’s Gilded Age. By the end of the 19th century, James J. The W ac o u ta —more than fiifty feet longer than Hill’s Summit A venue mansion in St. Paul. Hill was best known as the man who com The yacht was 240 feet long, thirty-two feet wide and drew over fourteen feet of water. The official registered weight of the vessel empty w as 803 tons, but fully loaded with furnish pleted a transcontinental railroad, the ings, fuel and stores its full displacement weight was 1,136 tons. The W acouta flag with Great Northern, without direct subsidies its “red wing” flies from the top of the main (center), mast. The photo, taken after the 1901 from the United States government. He renovation, shows the new rigging and pilot house. 4 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY St. Paul freighters on the Pacific and yachting on the Atlantic. At the end of the century, when Janies J. Hill began investigating the purchase of a yacht, his friend and business associate, J. P. Morgan, had just bought his third yacht, Corsair III. During the Spanish American War, Morgan sold Corsair II to the federal government. Before the war was over, Morgan decided to build a third. It was built with identical interior fittings, but at 302 feet it was 98 feet longer than Corsair II, and almost as long as the Navy’s newest battleships. The naval architect in charge of con struction of Corsair II was given a book of check blanks and told to spend whatever was needed and not bother Morgan. In constructing Corsair III, a similarly cava lier attitude toward costs prevailed. Mor gan wanted the carpeting to be identical to that on his previous yacht. When they found that the carpeting of Corsair II was no longer made, Morgan went to the great expense of having the old pattern set up at a carpet mill so he could trod on familiar carpets in his new yacht. This was not the way James J. Hill en tered East Coast yachting circles. He in James J. Hill fishing at the River St. John, Quebec, Canada, in 1912. Motor launches from vestigated the market for several years, the Wacouta brought people and supplies fifteen miles up the St. John to the fishing lodge, then bought a six-year-old yacht that had while the yacht remained at anchor in the St. Lawrence. steamed the equivalent of more than three times around the world. He paid 25 per cent less than the asking price and 50 per seafaring existence as the Eleanor. It was by replacing the wooden fleet with ships of cent less than the construction price.