The first leg of the journey was by rail, and took the visitors from Chicago to Rock Island, Illinois via the Rock Island Railroad. Then, passengers were transferred to several steam-powered paddlewheelers for the trek upriver. The steamboats stopped several times daily to load up on firewood, but still traveled fairly quickly—they unexpectedly appeared a day earlier than planned in St. Paul. Once in the area, many travelers hiked overland to see the Falls of St. Anthony, the only waterfall on the Mississippi River, in what is now Minneapolis. During a brief ceremony at the falls, a jar of water taken from the Atlantic Ocean was poured into the falls in a symbolic "mingling of the waters."