Nathaniel P. Hill (February 18, 1832-May 22, 1900) was a United States Senator from Colorado. Born in Montgomery, Orange County, New York, he attended Montgomery Academy and graduated from Brown University in 1856. He was an instructor and later professor of chemistry at Brown from 1856 to 1864; he traveled to Colorado in the spring of 1865 to investigate mineral resources. He spent a portion of 1865 and 1866 in Swansea, Wales and Freiburg, Saxony studying metallurgy, and returned to the United States with a perfected method of smelting gold ore and took up a permanent residence in Black Hawk, Colorado as manager of the Boston & Colorado Smelting Company. He was mayor of Black Hawk in 1871 and a member of the Territorial council in 1872 and 1873. He moved to Denver in 1873 and engaged in smelting and the real estate business, and was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate and served from March 4, 1879, to March 3, 1885. While in the Senate, he was chairman of the Committee on Mines and Mining (Forty-seventh Congress), Committee on Post Office and Post Roads (Forty-eighth Congress). Hill was owner and publisher of the Denver Republican, and a member of the United States delegation to the International Monetary Commission in 1891. He died in Denver and was interred in Fairmount Cemetery.
This article incorporates facts obtained from the public domain Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
