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) Choirs Festival of 1898 after Edward Elgar had recommended him as "far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the younger men". Having been greatly inspired by his reading of Longfellow's epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" (even later naming his own son "Hiawatha"), he decided to set the words to music in a choral work called "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast". The score was completed in May 1898 and was published by Novello before the first performance was given. Interest in "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" was so great from sales of the music that, even before a single note of the work