The Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, created in 1863, was the first rail link between the Twin Cities and Duluth. Financier Jay Cooke had selected Duluth as the northern end of the new railroad. Lyman Dayton, a local businessman put up $10,000 of his own money to do the original surveying work and served as the railroad's president until his death in 1865. It was completed in 1870, running through the city of Carlton and along the path of the Saint Louis River to Duluth. Later that year the first passenger trains started running between the Twin Cities and Duluth.

The Grand Excursion, a trip sponsored by the Rock Island Railroad, brought more than a thousand curious travelers into Minnesota by rail and steamboat in 1854. The next year, in 1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published The Song of Hiawatha, an epic poem said to be based on Ojibwe legends of Hiawatha (see Nanabozho ). Inspired by coverage of the Grand Excursion in eastern newspapers and those who read Longfellow's story, tourists flocked to the area in the following decades. Hiawatha, the real person, was a co-founder of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois confederacy.

Mark Twain's course took him through the Copper Country of the Keweenaw Peninsula and a stop at Houghton, Michigan. When Horace Greeley said "Go west, yuoung man" he was referring to the copper rush in Michigan's western upper peninsula. Houghton gained importance with the opening of the Keweenaw Waterway in 1873. The waterway was created by dredging out Portage Lake, Portage Shipping Canal and Lily Pond. This created the new island of Copper Island, the northern tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. In 1854 Houghton was said to be occupied by thieves, crooks, murderers and indians.

Before the arrival of the white man... On and around the Apostle Islands, Lake Superior, Ojibwa people discovered and innovated agricultural advancements, including excavating Copper deposits and creating specialized tools for agriculture, hunting and fishing, the use of canoes in rice harvesting, conjugal collaborative farming, and the Three Sisters Crop Complex, enabling the Ojibwa to greatly expand their population, territory and power outward in all directions creating an enormous nation.

July 18 Thursday - The Clemens party arrived in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and checked into the Hotel Iroquois. Sam gave his talk at the Soo Opera House. J.B. Pond did not make a diary entry on this stop, nor did Sam mention it in any letters extant. Gaw writes,"I found only one ad previewing the arrival of Twain in the July 13 edition of the Sault Ste.

James. J. Hill, railroad magnate of the Great Northern Railroad, developed the Northern Steamship Company to connect his freight shipments between Buffalo and Duluth. After constructing six lake freighters, he decided to capture passenger traffic on the Great Lakes and in 1892 began construction on the first of two luxury liners at the Globe Iron Works in Cleveland. His intention was to build the largest and most modern ships on the Great Lakes, equal in every way to the 'ocean greyhounds' in speed and luxury.

The ship docked at the Detroit pier for passengers to embark or disembark. Sam was interviewed by a reporter from the Detroit Journal who wrote:

"Cleveland, July 15, 1895."

"At the Stillman with 'Mark Twain,' his wife, and their daughter Clara. 'Mark' looks badly fatigued. "We have very comfortable quarters here. 'Mark' went immediately to bed on our arrival. He is nervous and weak. Reporters from all the morning and evening papers called and interviewed him. It seemed like old times again, and 'Mark' enjoyed it.

July 15, 1895: After a two hour lay over in Buffalo Twain's party proceeded to Cleveland, Ohio. They arrived that afternoon and Twain went straight to bed at the Stillman.

The Iroquois or Haudenosaunee are a historically powerful and important northeast Native American confederacy. They were known during the colonial years to the French as the "Iroquois League," and later as the "Iroquois Confederacy," and to the English as the "Five Nations" (before 1722), and later as the "Six Nations," comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples. The Iroquois have absorbed many other peoples into their cultures as a result of warfare, adoption of captives, and by offering shelter to displaced peoples.