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,
Kalevala dogs, wolves and cats. The story deviates from the full "Kalevala", presumably, to make the story more appropriate for children. The "Kalevala" also inspired the American Disney cartoonist Don Rosa to draw a Donald Duck story based on "The Kalevala", called "The Quest for Kalevala". The comic was released in the year of the 150th anniversary of "The Kalevala"'s publication. Franz Anton Schiefner's translation of the "Kalevala" was one inspiration for Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha, which is written in a similar trochaic tetrameter. Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's Estonian national epic "Kalevipoeg" was inspired by "The Kalevala". Both Väinämöinen