The opening of the canal at Sault Ste. Marie, in 1855 and the contemporaneous announcement of the railroads' coming had made Duluth the only port with access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Soon the lumber industry, railroads and mining were all growing so quickly that the influx of workers could hardly keep up with demand and storefronts popped up almost overnight. By 1868 business in Duluth was really booming. "The Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas".

On July 17, Mark, his wife & daughter, and business manager boarded the S.S. Northland out of Cleveland. The next day, they arrived at Sault Ste. Marie, where they spent the night at the Hotel Iroquois (burned down on March 12, 1907).

His first lecture was at the Soo Hotel in St. Ignace. Then Mark & his entourage boarded one of the Arnold Line boats – the T.S. Faxton – headed for Mackinac Island. He spoke at the Grand Hotel on the night of July 19.

William H. Doan, industrialist, philanthropist, and grandson of the pioneer Nathaniel Doan, gave land on the north side of Vincent Street, between Bond and Erie, plus $10,000 toward construction of the Music Hall, a public auditorium to be used for religious, educational and musical advancement. The cost exceeded $50,000, and, as the city's largest meeting place, it seated 4300 persons. Opened November 9, 1885.

Central Music Hall (1879–1900) was a mixed-use commercial building and theater in Chicago, situated on the southeast corner of State and Randolph Streets. It was designed by celebrated German-born American architect Dankmar Adler. It was the first important building designed by the famous architect, in which he made initial use of his knowledge of acoustics. The building was demolished in 1900, around the same time Adler died, in order to build the Marshall Field & Company store, now Macy's.

"The “city” of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep side of Mount Davidson, seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea, and in the clear Nevada atmosphere was visible from a distance of fifty miles! It claimed a population of fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand, and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets like bees and the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the “Comstock,” hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those same streets.

Genesee Country, the farthest western region of New York State, comprising the Genesee Valley and westward to the Niagara River, Lake Erie, and the Pennsylvania line. The tract was a 3,250,000 acre portion of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase that lay west of the Genesee River. It was purchased from Robert Morris by the Holland Land Company. One of the provisions of the sale was that Morris needed to settle the Indian title to the land, so he arranged for his son Thomas Morris to negotiate with the Iroquois at Geneseo, New York in 1797.

Developed near Canandaigua Lake at the site of the historic Seneca village Ganandogan, by the mid-19th century Canandaigua was an important railroad junction and home port for several steamboats that operated on the lake. After the Civil War, local industries included two brick works, the Lisk Manufacturing Company, several mills, and the regionally prominent McKechnie Brewery.