The Original Grand Excursion
The original excursion of 1854 was organized to promote the opening of a new rail line between Chicago and Rock Island, Illinois. This line was the first railway link from the eastern United States to the Mississippi River, and thus a more than symbolic moment in westward expansion, allowing for commerce and westward immigration, and ultimately a complete rail line to the Pacific coast.
The route took travelers overland from Chicago, Illinois to Rock Island, Illinois, then upriver to St. Paul, Minnesota on several steamships. Approximately 1,200 people took part in the Excursion, many of whom were noted reporters and distinguished residents from the Eastern United States. Among these were then-popular novelist Catherine Sedgwick and former president President Millard Fillmore, who was widely rumored to be considering another campaign for the Presidency. News of the planned trek spread widely in the months prior to it taking place, so it generated a fair amount of press attention. Along with The Song of Hiawatha, which was published around the same time, accounts of this journey have been widely credited with influencing people to visit and often settle in the region in the late 19th century.
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."
A repeat of the journey marking its 150th anniversary (sesquicentennial) ran from June 25 to July 5, 2004.
Read more about this topic: Grand Excursion
Famous quotes containing the words original, grand and/or excursion:
“Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A garden has this advantage, that it makes it indifferent where you live. A well-laid garden makes the face of the country of no account; let that be low or high, grand or mean, you have made a beautiful abode worthy of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men.... I talked with one of them, telling him that I had come all this distance partly to see where the white pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built, grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it. With a smile, he answered that he could hardly tell me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)