October 25 Friday – Sam replied to his sister, Pamela A. Moffett’s Sept. 8 (not extant) concerning timber and mining claims he filed on Lake Bigler. In part: 

My Dear Sister: / I have just finished reading your letter and Ma’s, of Sept. 8th. How in the world could they have been so long in coming? You ask if I have forgotten my promise to lay a claim for Mr. Moffett? By no means. I have already laid a timber claim on the borders of a Lake (Bigler) which throws Como in the shade—and if we succeed in getting one Mr. Jones to move his saw-mill up there, Mr. Moffett can just consider that claim better than bank stock. [Charles] Jones says he will move his mill up next Spring. In that claim I took up about two miles in length by one in width—and the names in it are as follows: “Sam. L. Clemens, Wm. A. Moffett, Thos. Nye” and three others. It is situated on “Sam Clemens Bay”—so named by Capt. Nye”—and it goes by that name among the inhabitants of that region. I had better stop about “the Lake,” though—for whenever I think of it I want to go there and die, the place is so beautiful. I’ll build a country seat there one of these days that will make the Devil’s mouth water if he ever visits the earth. Jim Lampton will never know whether I laid a claim there for him or not until he comes here himself [MTL 1: 129-130]. Note: Charles Jones, owner of Clear Creek Mill, did not relocate. Captain John Nye was the Governor’s brother; see n. 2 in source. Jim Lampton was Sam’s uncle, James A.H. Lampton; see n. 3. Sam also encouraged uncle James A.H. Lampton to come out. On Oct. 26 he also wrote his mother a long description of the territory [MTL 1: 129; 134n3].
What became of Sam’s timber claim? Antonucci speculates that Twain never completed the timber claim due to unreliable maps and the discovery that the intended land claim was actually in California, not Nevada: “Government agents would have held in abeyance the approval of Clemens’ claim until General Land Office surveys underway at the time could provide plats showing the details of government land ownership and more importantly, the state-territorial boundary between California and Nevada. When these approved plats became available, they showed the location of Clemens’ claim was about 2-3 miles inside the state of California and therefore, ineligible for the land preemption program in the Nevada Territory. Twain never spoke on record or wrote about the timber claim after October 1861. No other information or public records on the timber claim have been located, so we may never know for sure the reason for the failed enterprise” [138-9].