(bright music) - The Columbia River has been flowing for over a million years.

It has seen tumultuous times, lava flows and scouring ice age floods.

It has fed the first people since time immemorial.

It has been a pathway for explorers and an artery for trade.

It has been damned for electricity and its waters have cooled the reactors of the atomic age.

It has served as a scenic backdrop for many wonders like Stonehenge.

(playful music) (bright piano music) The original Stonehenge is a neolithic circular monument of upright stones on Salisbury Plain in what is now England.

Some believe it was a sacred place of the Druids, pagan priests first described by Roman conquerors.

It is said to have astronomical significance aligned for the winter and summer solstice.

It was built in stages starting about 5,000 years ago.

But it still evokes a kind of mystical sense.

(bright music) In the modern world it has inspired imaginations and imitators all over many with a whimsical purpose, like Carhenge in Nebraska, a full size Stonehenge made of junk cars.

Future archeologists might conclude that we once worship the automobile.

And, they'd be right.

And one man who was a huge promoter of car-friendly roads was the eccentric millionaire who built his own Stonehenge on the Columbia River near Goldendale, Washington.

His name was Sam Hill and his version of this strange temple is just one concrete example of his passions.

And I mean concrete, literally.

(bright music) Sam Hill was a lawyer, businessman, railroad man, and multimillionaire.

He traveled widely, was friends of royalty.

He was close with Queen Maria of Romania, for example.

James J. Hill, the Railroad Baron called the Empire Builder who reshaped the Pacific Northwest over 100 years ago was Sam's father-in-law.

Sam Hill was rich, well connected, and had a vision for the region beyond railroads.

He advocated building a system of paved roads throughout the state.

He had this idea before the first horseless carriage was put-putting on the streets of Seattle.

He decided to build a mansion near Goldendale and had the hopes of attracting a new Quaker farming community to the then-remote area on the Washington side of the river.

Hill had been raised a Quaker.

Hill built it out of steel reinforced concrete.

He named it Mary Hill for his wife and daughter, though he rarely saw either of them.

It wasn't finished in Hills' lifetime.

It became and remains an art museum.

Hills biography dubbed him the Prince of Castle Nowhere.

The prince of this castle was, however, a tireless promoter of roads.

He paved 10 miles of road near his mansion as a demonstration project.

His Mary Hill castle had built-in ramps on either side, so guests arriving by automobile could drive right into its great hall and out the other side.

Accommodating autos was the future.

His advocacy played a role in Oregon's building the scenic highway that runs along its side of the Columbia through the Gorgeous Gorge.

Hill was a founder of the Washington Good Roads Association, which in turn led to the creation of the Washington State Department of Transportation, the infrastructure for autos, (indistinct) to Sam Hill.

(bright music) (train whistles) Hill traveled to Europe during World War I and was horrified at the human cost of the conflict.

(dramatic music) After visiting Stonehenge, he decided to build a replica at Mary Hill dedicated to those from K (indistinct) County who had given their lives in the war.

Stonehenge's mystery whereas one newspaper put at its awe inspiring vagueness somehow felt right.

Naturally, Hill decided to build a replica, not of stone, but of his beloved concrete, more than 2 million pounds of it.

He expected his concrete stones to last a thousand years.

His Stonehenge included an ultra stone like the original on which it was then believed Druids sacrificed humans to the gods of war.

He'll believed that despite human progress, we were still sacrificing our young to war gods.

On July 4th, 1918, before World War I had even ended, the ultra stone of the monument was placed and dedicated.

Thus Mary Hill Stonehenge is thought to be the first World War I memorial erected in the United States.

It wasn't finished for another decade.

Mary Hill Stonehenge will likely baffle future archeologists.

The nearby hills means the rising sun cannot cast a shadow to mark the summer solstice as does the original, making it a kind of broken clock.

Yet it offers us a place to contemplate human loss and the epic history of its beautiful setting.

And amid such musings, we can take a minute to appreciate the eccentric millionaire who hope to speed us up the road of human progress.

(tranquil music) - Hear more about this episode on the Mossback podcast.

Just search Mossback wherever you listen.