Saint Louis, Missouri was well known to Samuel Clemens.

According to Rasmussen, while working as a river boat pilot "he landed at St. Louis perhaps 60 times."

St Louis was Sam's destination when he first left home in Hannibal, arriving May 27, 1853. He was 17 1/2 years old and aiming for New York City.

Sam returned to St. Louis in 1854.  He contributed a letter to the Muscatine Tri-Weekly Journal, 16 Feb 1855 that remarked on efforts to enlarge the size of St. Louis as well as railroad developments.  

Orion Clemens and his wife had settled there in June of 1855,  Sam, and younger brother Henry, helped Orion publish the Keokuk Journal out of a building at 202 Main Street.  Sam lived at First and Johnson Streets.  By late 18i55 Sam was across the river in Warsaw, Illinois working a for another newspaper. By the fall of 1856, Sam had left for Cincinnati.  Orion departed Keokuk for Nevada  but eventually returned to stay in 1872.

In 1882:

The Clemens family moved to Hannibal in November of 1839,  

Hannibal by 1844 took pride in four general stores, three sawmills, two planing mills, three blacksmith shops, two hotels, three saloons, two churches, two schools, a tobacco factory, a hemp factory, and a tan yard, as well as a flourishing distillery up at the still house branch. West of the village lay “Stringtown,” so called because its cabins and stock pens were strung out along the road. Small industry was the lifeblood of the town [Wecter 60].

Orion Clemens moved there in September of 1853 and ran the Muscatine Journal.  Sam joined him for an undetermined period of time, ending in August of 1854.

August 23, 1853 Sam Clemens first passed through Buffalo on his way to New York. 

August of 1869, he had bought into the Buffalo Express and became a resident of the city. He lived in an East Swan Street boardinghouse near the newspaper, thenm went on a lecture tour.  Returning to Buffalo as a married man, he moved into a furnished house at 472 Delaware Avenue.

The Bloomington area was at the edge of a large grove occupied by the Kickapoo people before the first Euro-American settlers arrived in the early 1820s.

Springfield was originally named "Calhoun", after Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. The land that Springfield now occupies was settled first by trappers and fur traders who came to the Sangamon River in 1818. The first cabin was built in 1820, by John Kelly. It was located at what is now the northwest corner of Second Street and Jefferson Street. In 1821, Calhoun was designated as the county seat of Sangamon County due to fertile soil and trading opportunities.