Today could have been a bore with a trip to get my oil changed and run to the grocery store. However, the bright sunshine beckoned me for an explore. I knew I wasn’t feeling a hundred percent after my Covid quarantine, but a fifteen minute journey up the road to see Mark Twain’s cabin was too good to pass up. Thinking of the snow that is due tomorrow, I decided to go on a little adventure.

North on Highway 49 about eight miles from Sonora, CA, stands a marker for Mark Twain’s Cabin. When I was heading back from Washington at the end of last month, I went past this sign and noted it. I wanted to explore this land mark, just out of curiosity. I don’t know a lot about Mark Twain other than he has a lot of quotes about how people are and that I’ve read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. It was enough to go on an adventure.

I veered off the main highway onto the coarsely paved road leading up the mountainside. As I climbed the hill I stopped long enough to get a clear view of New Melones Lake. Simply gorgeous. I can see why he picked this hill to stop and write at.

I continued up the road to find several houses and even livestock. This surprised me. I suppose I envisioned this cabin to be in the middle of the woods, not a residential street. I didn’t even realize I was making expectations until they were checked.

I get to the top of the hill and see a small cabin completely surrounded by a rod iron fence. The whole place was about the size of the kitchen and couch in my RV, maybe sixteen feet. A solid stone chimney stood on one side with a lone tree inside the fence. On another side, the front door was open and you could see the fireplace and a chair.

The place had little energy and felt more like a memory that someone wanted to keep of someone who stayed there once. The best it had was information, written in stone about the building, the hill, and the man it was named after.

Note: Bret Harte was a fellow writer Twain met while in San Francisco. The local town “Twain Harte” was named after the two men because the founder’s wife was so fond of their writing during the California Gold Rush.

I decided I wanted to know more about Mark Twain. I knew that was a pen name, but I didn’t remember his real name. And I thought he was from Mississippi, the setting of him most famous books. What was he doing in a Mining town in California? Thankfully, we live in a world with information at our fingertips, so I answered my questions.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Mississippi in 1835. He wrote some for his brother that owned a newspaper, but then lived his dream as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Apparently this went well for about four years until the Civil War broke out. Clemens headed to Nevada following his brother and began to write again.

Mark Twain chose his pen named based on it’s meaning in river navigation, in which “mark twain” means water that is two fathoms (or about 12 feet) deep.

Twain found himself in California on a mining expedition and laned on Jackass Hill, named for the over 200 mules that would stay in between the mining operations, close to a town called Angels Camp. Thanks to a story he overheard one night at the Saloon at the Angels Camp Hotel, he got an ear of a humorous story he turned into a legend. In 1865, he published the short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” and acquired international attention.

I’ve never heard of this before, but I found it on public domain: “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

Though his career as a miner was short lived, the inspiration he got while spending three months in a cabin in the Sierra mountains, ignited the beginning of his writing legacy. Calaveras County is self named “Frogtown” for its “Frog Jump” tradition at the county fair beginning in 1928 after the success of Twain’s tale.

Seeing and living in these mountains, I can see what was so inspiring about the landscape and the people.

This adventure was short but impactful, just like Mark Twain’s time in the Sierras. Inspired to read and write, I came home full and overflowing with creative energy.