Minneapolis–Saint Paul Grand Excursion, a trip into the Upper Midwest sponsored by the Rock Island Railroad, brought more than a thousand curious travelers into the area by rail and steamboat in 1854. The next year, in 1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published "The Song of Hiawatha", an epic poem based on the Ojibwe legends of Hiawatha. A number of natural area landmarks were included in the story, such as Lake Minnetonka and Minnehaha Falls. Tourists inspired by the coverage of the Grand Excursion in eastern newspapers and those who read Longfellow's story flocked to the area in the following decades. At one time,
The Song of Hiawatha (Coleridge-Taylor) Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Boston, Washington and Chicago. His final tour was in 1910. His last composition, written in 1912, the year of his death, was the "Hiawatha Ballet Music", Op. 82, based on "The Song of Hiawatha". "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Coleridge-Taylor had no conception of how successful it would become, as he had sold it outright for the sum of 15 guineas. After his death in 1912, the fact that he and his family received no royalties from what was one of the most successful and popular works written in the previous 50 years, led