November 3, 1872, Sam wrote to his sister-in-law, Susan Crane.
“If you & Theodore will come over here in the Spring with Livy & me & spend the Summer, you shall see a country that is so beautiful that you will be obliged to believe in fairy-land;—there is nothing like it elsewhere on the globe” [MTP, drop-in letters].
“I would a good deal rather live here if I could get the rest of you over” [MTL 5: 213].
Region of Oklahoma mentioned in The American Claimant. The character Washington Hawkins arrives in Washington, D.C. as Congressional Delegate from Cherokee Strip. "He explains to Colonel Sellers that he has no official status in Congress because 'we are not even a territory, there's no organic act, the government hasn't any official knowledge of us whatever'."
Mark Twain Cave — originally McDowell's Cave — is a show cave located near Hannibal, Missouri. It was named for author Mark Twain whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Clemens lived in Hannibal from 1839 to 1853, age 4 to 17.
A prominent hill in Hannibal, originally known as Holliday's Hill. Mark Twain named the fictional location from a place in Cardiff, Wales that reminded him of Holliday's Hill. It figures in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It stands about 300 feet above the Mississippi River, the southern end of a long escarpment that parallels the river. Rasmussen reports that this is the location from which Sam and a friend rolled a boulder down the hill and through a cooper's shed in town.
Gold prospecting in Calaveras County began in late 1848 with a camp founded by Henry Angel. Angel may have first arrived in California as a soldier, serving under Colonel Frémont during the Mexican War. After the war's end, he found himself in Monterey where he heard of the fabulous finds in the gold fields. He joined the Carson-Robinson party of prospectors and set out for the mines. The company parted ways upon reaching what later became known as Angels Creek. Henry Angel tried placer mining but soon opened a trading post.