GRAND EXCURSION

The Anson Northrup was one of many boats involved in the Grand Excursion of 2004.

GRAND EXCURSION. From June 25 to July 5, 2004 the Grand Excursion including the largest riverboat and steamboat flotilla in over a century. It followed the 1854 Grand Excursion’s route up the Mississippi River, from the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Planners of the original excursion wanted to advertise the Upper Mississippi. In 1854, the Chicago and Rock Island became the first railroad to reach from the East Coast to the MISSISSIPPI RIVER. To celebrate, Henry Farnam of Sheffield and Farnam, contractors for the railroad, suggested a six-day excursion for a select group of stockholders, friends and family. (1) Word spread quickly. As a result, a 1,200-person entourage traveled by steamboat from Rock Island, Illinois to Saint Paul, Minnesota, and to the Falls of Saint Anthony. According to the Galena Jeffersonian, “the object of the excursion, on the part of its projectors, is not so much pleasure merely, as a desire to make a thousand more or less, men of capital and influence acquainted with the enchanting beauty, the boundless resources and the unexampled prosperity of the Great West.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, the excursionists, among whom was former U.S. President Millard Fillmore, were considered “the most brilliant ever assembled" and the guests "the elite of the American Republic." (2)

The group who contributed the most to the purpose and results of the Excursion were the fifty newspaper editors. Their writings informed and excited the nation about the Upper Mississippi Valley and the western frontier. At the stop in Dubuque, even a driving rain storm failed to dampen "booster" speeches. (3)

By 1894, Captain Russell Blakely reported, “the success of [the Grand Excursion] did more than the best laid plans for advertising the country than has ever been made since…Good results came back to us in a thousand ways and for many years.” The region attracted millions dollars in investments and became an important force in the growth of nineteenth century America.

According to statistics collected by organizers of the event, the 2004 Excursion had similar effects. More than one million people attended at least part of the event throughout the region. The choices of boats ranged from the Delta Queen or Mississippi Queen from St. Louis to St. Paul and short day trips, lunch, dinner and moonlight cruises, and some overnight trips on boats such as the Julia Belle Swain, Spirit of Peoria, Celebration Belle, Harriet Bishop, and the Anson Northrup. (4) Nearly 40,000 tickets were sold with a 99% satisfaction rate. At least 300 new river events were launched and, important to such sites as the NATIONAL RIVERS HALL OF FAME and the NATIONAL MISSISSIPPI RIVER MUSEUM AND AQUARIUM, 92% of the passengers planned to return to the river.

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Source:

1. Goodman, Robert and Nancy. Paddlewheels on the Upper Mississippi 1823-1854, Stillwater, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Printing Services, October 2003, p. 3

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 6

4. "The Grand Excursion 2004 on the Upper Mississippi River," Online: http://greatriver.com/grand_excursion_2004.htm