On November 30, 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri. As a young teen, Clemens worked as a typesetter for his brother, Orion, who was the editor of the Hannibal Journal newspaper in Hannibal, Missouri. In his mid-20s, Clemens captained steamboats on the Mississippi River. With the Civil War halting most steamboat traffic, Clemens moved west where he wrote for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada in 1862 and moved to San Francisco 2 years later.
Clemens started writing under the pseudonym “Mark Twain” in 1863. Mark Twain traveled through the gold country visiting many mining towns and his short experience in Angels Camp provided material for his “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” in 1865 and earned him national fame. In his brief but lively stay in Sacramento, he dubbed it “The City of Saloons” and that at any establishment in the city “You can shut your eyes and march into the first door you come to and call for a drink,...
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