 In 1823 the first steamboat , known as the Virginia , arrived at Fort Snelling carrying Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro . By the 1830s a steady , if not yet large , stream of steamboat traffic plied the river including some ships listed as ferrying " pleasure parties " . The first railroad to reach the Mississippi ( in Illinois ) , the Rock Island Railroad , was completed in the 1854 . The event was celebrated with <unk> excursions from Rock Island up the Mississippi into Minnesota . Those excursions touched off such a wave of interest in Minnesota that 56 @,@ 000 tourists visited Saint Paul by steamboat in 1856 . 
