Almost 150 years ago, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette crossed the Mississippi River near Prairie Du Chien, Wis., to enter Iowa for the first time.

This Sunday, 14 runners will discover Iowa again as they begin the first leg of the 1996 Veishea Voyage torch run in Prairie Du Chien, Wis.

Veishea’s annual torch run will not only correspond with the theme of Veishea 1996, “Continuing Iowa’s Heritage,” but will focus on Iowa’s Sesquicentennial.

The 430-mile route will start in Prairie Du Chien, going through Iowa City, Burlington and Des Moines, and then back to Ames.

“We will be hitting all the old capitals of Iowa,” said Shellee Novotny, Veishea general co-chair.

The caravan of one minivan and two full-sized vans will leave from Ames at 10 a.m. Saturday, camp overnight in Pike’s Peak State Park, then start running Sunday afternoon.

The Veishea Voyage will end Thursday night when the last group finishes its run in Ames. All the torch runners will carry the torch into the Veishea opening ceremonies Friday, April 19, at noon.

While the first leg of the route is the shortest, only 72 miles, “the hills are outrageous,” said Ross Johnson, Veishea Voyage coordinator. But the area is “woodsy with lots of good sightseeing,” he said.

Johnson will be running with the first group and again with the fourth group, which runs on Wednesday.

Veishea Voyage 1996 will be ISU senior Jill Schluter’s first torch run.

“I’d been doing a lot of running, and I had a friend who did it last year. I thought it would be fun,” Schluter said.

While Schluter has been training for the run, she said she is not used to running outdoors on hilly terrain.

“I’ll run until I drop, I guess,” she said.

Voyage torch runners will stop in Iowa City and Burlington for short Veishea ceremonies. Novotny and Mark Lee, the other general co-chair, will speak at each ceremony along with the mayors of each community.

“We send invitations to alums in a 40-mile radius to invite them to the ceremony,” Novotny said. The ceremonies “bring townspeople out to see what Veishea is about. They have usually been well attended in the past,” she added.