S4 S U N DAY , J U N E 11, 2 017
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ROAD TRIPS NEVADA AND CALIFORNIA
CANOEISTS ply the waters of Lake Tahoe, of which Mark Twain, in “Roughing It,” wrote: “I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”
TRACKING TWAIN
By Christopher Reynolds
Who flies to Reno on a spring
evening, rents a car and heads into
the mountains with no skis, no
mountain bike and a backpack full
of books? Me.
Why? Because in 1861 a 25-year-
old Missouri riverboat pilot named
Sam Clemens boarded a stage-
coach bound for the same territory.
He was going to dodge the Civil
War for a few months, work for the
government, do some writing,
maybe dig for silver. Instead he
stayed west for almost seven years,
emerged as Mark Twain, gave us
“Huckleberry Finn” and won global
fame as that sardonic old man with
the white hair and droopy mus-
tache.
But what do we know about the
young Clemens in Nevada and Cal-
ifornia? Not much. That’s why I
had Twain’s Western memoir,
“Roughing It” (1872), and two biog-
raphies in the backpack, and it’s
why I spent four days on a 270-mile
road trip and Twain pilgrimage.
I wanted to see some of what he
saw in those early travels — a dusty
Nevada silver-mining town, the
shores of Lake Tahoe, the hills of
California Gold Country. And I
wondered: After so much history,
myth and marketing, how much
Twain remains?
A desk in Virginia City
The route from Reno to Virginia
City, Nev., starts with broad,
smooth Interstate 580, but before
long, you’re climbing Nevada High-
way 341, a narrow, curvy road that
creeps near the summit of rocky
Mt. Davidson.
Virginia City (population 855),
carved into the steep slopes and
raked by winds, is part-ghost town
and part-tourist concoction
plopped atop a netherworld of old
mining tunnels.
The silver boom and the Wild
West are the prevailing themes
here, and there are no regularly
scheduled Twain tours. But there
is a 24-hour Mark Twain Saloon
Casino, and his face and name
adorn several storefronts.
By the time I arrived at the Sil-
ver Queen Hotel (built in 1876),
night had fallen and the old build-
ing was creaking. Beneath my up-
stairs window, snowflakes fell on
the empty boardwalk of C Street,
A TRIO portrays Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson in Virginia City, Nev., where
Samuel Clemens worked at a newspaper and came up with his pen name, Mark Twain.
the main drag.
It wasn’t so quiet when Clemens
showed up in 1862. In those days,
silver prospectors were arriving by
the hundreds every week. The
town, he wrote in “Roughing It,”
was a jumble of “fire companies,
brass bands, banks, hotels, thea-
tres, ‘hurdy-gurdy’ houses, wide-
open gambling palaces … a dozen
breweries and half a dozen jails …
and some talk of building a
church.”
When silver mining didn’t work
out, Clemens took to reporting for
the Virginia City Territorial Enter-
prise. By early 1863 he had come up
with the pen name Mark Twain.
Crime, culture, mining, politics
— he covered them all with more
verve than scruples, inventing
hoaxes and waging feuds.
In “Mark Twain: A Life,” biogra-
pher Ron Powers put it this way:
“Rather than focus on facts that
any fool could observe and report,
Sam reported facts that would
have occurred in a better and more
interesting world.”
These are words to remember
as you enter the dim, dusty Mark
Twain Museum at the Territorial
Enterprise (admission $5), down-
stairs from Sandie’s General Store
on C Street. The re-created news-
paper office is furnished with old
posters, taxidermy, a vintage
printing press and type cases, a
portrait of the author, an aged
wooden toilet that says “Mark
Twain sat here” and, in prime loca-
tion, a weathered desk.
Of course, you have to ask
whether the desk was used by the
author.
Sandie Buie, who manages the
privately owned Twain museum,
tells visitors that the desk was dis-
played at the 1939 Golden Gate
International Exposition in San
Francisco, and that its owners
have a letter from the expo com-
mittee authenticating it as being
used by Twain.
But Buie likes to tread lightly
when it comes to historical claims.
The Territorial Enterprise
L AT I M E S .
changed offices twice. In 1875 a fire
burned down most of the city. And
Twain himself was never a particu-
larly reliable narrator.
“People will come in for tours,
and they’ll believe every word in
‘Roughing It,’ ” Buie said. Even
better, Buie said, she’s had visitors
who claim to be descendants of the
author. Visitors named Twain.
I was still picturing those Twain
visitors as guide Greg Grant, who
specializes in mining tours and
mock gunfights, led me to the Cor-
ner Bar at Piper’s Opera House
(built 1878) on B Street and or-
dered a shot.
It wasn’t hard to picture young
Sam Clemens doing the same
thing at this same address.
In fact, as historian and former
Virginia City resident Carolyn
Grattan Eichin and others have
pointed out, there was an Old Cor-
ner bar on this spot in the early
1860s.
By custom some drinkers’ tabs
were tallied with chalk on a wall,
and “twain” was a common way of
saying two. By at least two ac-
counts in 19th century Nevada
newspapers, Clemens got his nick-
name by hollering “Mark Twain!”
to bartenders.
Twain denied this and insisted
that his pen name came from Mis-
sissippi River boat slang. But I
know which explanation I enjoy
more.
A trail above Tahoe
The next day I moved on to the
wetter side of the Virginia moun-
tain range and pulled on my hiking
boots.
After a drive of less than 50
miles from Virginia City on Nevada
highways 341, 431 (the Mount Rose
Highway) and 28, I reached the
Tunnel Creek Cafe in Incline Vil-
lage, Nev., and shook hands with
David Antonucci, a retired civil and
environmental engineer. Then we
started climbing up the Flume
Trail, one of the most popular hik-
ing and mountain biking paths in
the region.
Within minutes, we were sur-
rounded by pines, a vast indigo
lake sprawling below us. When
Twain and a buddy arrived here in
1861 (before his time in Virginia
City), it was known as Lake Bigler.
Now we call it Tahoe.
Antonucci knows the territory
particularly well. I arranged to join