Twin Cities Hiawatha Twin Cities Hiawatha The Twin Cities Hiawatha, often just Hiawatha, was a named passenger train operated by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (also known as the Milwaukee Road), and traveled from Chicago to the Twin Cities. The original train takes its name from the epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. There are a number of Hiawatha-themed names within the city of Minneapolis, the terminus of the original train. The first "Hiawatha" ran in 1935; in 1939 the Milwaukee Road introduced a second daily trip between Chicago and Minneapolis. The two trains were known
Hiawatha and Minnehaha in the United States through the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. Accomplished Norwegian sculptor Jacob Fjelde immigrated to Minnesota in 1887, following family members to the area. He established a studio in Minneapolis and began receiving public and private commissions. One commission was to create a sculpture for the Minnesota Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Fjelde chose to create "Hiawatha and Minnehaha", a plaster sculpture illustrating a particular section of Longfellow's poem, "The Song of Hiawatha". This work was installed at the entrance of the Minnesota Building for the duration of