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Margaret Hunt Hill was an accomplished businesswoman, civic leader and renowned gardener.

Margaret Hunt Hill, the feisty, determined first-born child of legendary Texas oilman H.L. Hunt Jr., died late Thursday after a brief illness at her Dallas home.

She was 91.

Longtime friend Ruth Sharp Altshuler of Dallas said Mrs. Hill, an active civic supporter and fundraiser, was "down to earth, but a shrinking violet she was not."

Mrs. Altshuler described Mrs. Hill's father as "the Bill Gates of his day."

Mr. Hunt became synonymous with Texas oil as the primary player of the East Texas Oil Field. Mrs. Hill had a front-row seat to her father's dealings at a time when it was North America's largest oil field.

"For 20 or 30 years, he was always referred to as the richest man in the world," Mrs. Altshuler said. "To be the first child of the richest man in the world brought its own joys and hardship, but mainly it brought responsibility.

"Margaret Hunt Hill could never be anonymous like the rest of us, but she wore the crown with dignity, grace and modesty," Mrs. Altshuler said.

While Mrs. Hill "was chairman of lots of things" in Dallas and was known across the country for her gardening.

Sometimes her gardening took on Hunt-family proportions.

"She was the landscape designer for the [U.S.] Air Force Academy [football] stadium," said her daughter, Lyda Hill of Dallas.

Mrs. Hill and her late husband, Al Hill, were active in business and leisure in Colorado Springs, Colo., where the couple spent their summers.

Her involvement at the Broadmoor Garden Club and the Kissing Camels Garden Club went well beyond passive membership. In 1951, she and her husband developed the Garden of the Gods, a private refuge at the foot of Pikes Peak where many prominent Texans retreated from the summer heat.

Mrs. Hill and her husband opened the nearby Kissing Camels Golf Club and residential development named for the Kissing Camels rock formation in the Garden of the Gods.

In 1962, Mrs. Hill's handiwork on her own golf course got her the Air Force stadium assignment, her daughter said.

"Someone from the Air Force Academy showed up at our golf course and said to the greens keeper, 'You do a great job. Could you landscape the football stadium?' "

"He said, 'I just put stuff where Miss Hill tells me.' "

Said Mrs. Hill's daughter: "It was her last military job, because she found a nursery that was going out of business, and it had the right plants. She bought everything so cheap she had money left at the end. I don't think the military had a form for 'we don't need any more.' "

In Dallas, Mrs. Hill led Hunt family efforts to create the Paseo del Flores Walk that links gardens at the Dallas Arboretum in honor of her mother, Lyda Bunker Hunt.

The first of the skyscraping Santiago Calatrava suspension bridges planned for the Trinity River will bear Mrs. Hill's name.

Mrs. Hill's family company was approached by the Trinity Commons Foundation about being a title sponsor for the bridge; the company's gift was one of the first for the bridge.

Born to H.L. and Lyda Hunt in Lake Village, Ark., Mrs. Hill spent much of her youth in El Dorado, Ark., and moved to with her family to Tyler when she was 15 years old. She graduated from high school in Tyler in 1933.

Mrs. Hill grew up traveling the back roads of East Texas oil fields as her father plied what he felt was his natural genius and gambler's instinct for wildcatting. She learned the oil business over Mr. Hunt's lunch and supper discussions.

Before her 21st birthday, Mrs. Hill and her brother, Haroldson Lafayette "Hassie" Hunt III, signed the loan papers that started Penrod Drilling, created to drill wells for Hunt Oil.

"You and Hassie can have Hunt Oil's drilling business provided you work well and do not overcharge," she quoted her father as saying in her 1994 memoir H.L. and Lyda: Growing Up in the H.L. Hunt and Lyda Bunker Hunt Family.

"That's just the way she grew up," her daughter said. "It wouldn't have occurred to her – just like it didn't occur to me – that women usually don't do what we do."

Mrs. Hill was also a partner with her siblings in Placid Oil Co., but she divested her and her late brother Hassie's holdings in that company and created Hunt Petroleum in 1983.

In 1934, during her freshman year at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., Mrs. Hill was Queen of the third Tyler Rose Festival. A rose was named in her honor.

In 1994, Mrs. Hill was the first Hunt family member to speak publicly about her father's three families. She said she did so to counter distortions and misperceptions about the family.

Mrs. Hill learned she and her immediate siblings were not her father's only progeny in June 1935. She and her brother Hassie were about to return from a trip to inspect a gold mine her father had purchased in Winnemucca, Nev. Her brother told her that H.L Hunt had four children by Frania Tye of Florida.

Mrs. Hunt recounted the event in her memoir.

In 1937, Mrs. Hill joined her father at Hunt Oil in Tyler as a switchboard operator. As an executive assistant to her father, she screened his calls to the company, a process she said taught her much about the oil business.

In 1938, Mrs. Hill and her family moved to Dallas, where her father had purchased a stately mansion on White Rock Lake for $69,000.

In Dallas, Mrs. Hill became her father's executive secretary.

She met her husband, Al Hill, at the 1938 Petroleum Club Ball. They were married at the Hunt estate in October of that year. Mr. Hill died of complications from hip surgery in 1988, four months short of their 50th wedding anniversary.

Mrs. Hill was an active member of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, where a hall is named in her honor.

She was a zone chairman and national board member for the Garden Club of America. In 1990, that group honored her with its Flora Award.

In Dallas, she had served as treasurer of the Junior League, president of the Dallas Woman's Club and chairwoman of the Easter Seals-Dallas Society for Crippled Children.

Mrs. Hill's honors included the Komen Foundation National Philanthropy Award in 1996, the Dallas Historical Society Award for Excellence in 1999 and the Planned Parenthood Shelburne Award.

Two of Mrs. Hill's brothers have died in recent years. Hassie died in April 2005, and Lamar Hunt died in December.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday at Highland Park Presbyterian Church after a private interment.

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Hill is survived by another daughter, Alinda Wiker of Dallas; a son, Al G. Hill Jr. of Dallas; a sister, Caroline Hunt of Dallas; two brothers, Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt, both of Dallas; seven grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

Memorials may be made to Planned Parenthood of Dallas, 7424 Greenville Ave., Suite 206, Dallas, Texas 75230; Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Va. 24401; the Lee Park Restoration of the Southern Memorial Society, 3333 Lee Park, Dallas, Texas 75219; or the Garden of the Gods Foundation, P.O. Box 49033, Colorado Springs, Colo. 80949.