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) one person who was accommodated was Sir Arthur Sullivan, who said (according to Coleridge-Taylor’s daughter Avril): "I'm always an ill man now, my boy, but I'm coming to hear your music tonight even if I have to be carried." Sullivan's high opinion of the cantata is privately confirmed by the entry he made in his diary later that night, one of the very few in which he referred at all to a contemporary composer: "Dined at home and went to Roy. Coll. Music Concert to hear Coleridge-Taylor's "Hiawatha." Much impressed by the lad's genius. He is a "composer", not a