It happened in 1863 outside Virginia City, Nevada.
The Day Mark Twain was Robbed by Masked Gunmen
Most English speaking people have heard of and admire Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain. His abilities to mold both the spoken and the written word into mesmerizing tales laced with humor, wit, and charm were unmatched in his day, and they continue to please kids of all ages today. School kids across America read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as if he had written it just for them. Other writers have taken note. H.L. Mencken and Ernest Hemingway regarded him as our finest author and the cornerstone of American literature. Both men had the added distinction of having lived during Twain’s lifetime.
I never read Huckleberry Finn, or Tom Sawyer, or any other complete work written by Twain. Oh, I’m not an ignoramus. I’m just lazy and prefer to read summaries, and condensed versions, or watch movies of his stories. But my connection is there at a deeper level, and it keeps showing up wherever I go. For example, I lived in Buffalo, New York for a while; so did Twain. Ditto for Hartford and San Francisco. He noted that the coldest winter of his life was one summer he spent in San Francisco. I know the feeling. When he went on the road with his “lectures,” he stopped in many of the same cities that I have visited or lived in. I even visited Virginia City, Nevada where he was hired in this first writing capacity as a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper. They haven’t forgotten him there, and neither have I.
Let me qualify my Twain credentials, or the lack thereof, by stating that today I am a little more than one year older than Twain was when he died. I offer that qualification on the flimsy but sometimes useful notion that I could be telling the truth. Older people tend to be bit more truthful than younger ones if only because it’s easier to not get caught in a lie when you tell the truth. It’s one of those simple axioms of life that youngsters find difficult to understand.
Now back to Virginia City. It’s located just south Reno and just east of Lake Tahoe. It’s a small town that looks pretty much today as it did back in 1863 when young Sam Clemens was just learning his craft there. It is probably better known today as the location of a fictional ranch than it is for the place that launched Sam Clemens’ career. That fictional ranch blazed its way across North American television screens from 1959 to 1974 and into the hearts and minds of viewers as “Bonanza,” the home of the Cartwright family (remember Ben, Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe?). None of them lived on the Bonanza ranch or in Virginia City. Both Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain lived in Virginia City.
I stopped there sometime in the mid 1990s. I had been doing some heavy gambling and moderate drinking (perhaps vice versa) in the fancy casinos at Lake Tahoe and Reno, and decided to take in some true Western culture in Virginia City (translation: I lost my ass in the casinos and had limped out of town with just enough money to get home).
Virginia City is a great little town with all the memorabilia you might expect. There were old bars and taverns with posters and newspapers and printing presses from bygone years. I don’t recall all the gangsters and other bad asses who found refuge there, but there were many. The one tale that I do remember was about a young Sam Clemens who skipped out of town after challenging someone to a duel. It seems that dueling was against the law back in the days when Civil Wars and shootouts in the streets were common place. Go figure.
After taking in the sights and sounds and after downing a few beers, I hit the road going south toward Las Vegas.
About a mile from town I realized rather abruptly that the beer I had just consumed had overtaken my capacity to retain it. With nothing in sight save an old billboard, I pulled over to the side of the road. I walked over to the billboard and began to add some illegal moisture to the sand and dust that lay and swirled there.
The billboard was so dilapidated it had bent completely over from the wind and rain and was half covered with sand and soil. With nothing better to do, I started to read its message. It was nearly washed out from time and the elements, but I made out the words “On this spot in 1863 Samuel Clemens was robbed by masked gunmen.”
“Holy shit!” I thought. “This is a lot more interesting than most of the stuff in town.” My mental geological computer scanned the terrain, the billboard, the wear and tear, and quickly concluded that this site was at least 130 years old, and it had more likely than not been erected right after the robbery. But it didn’t seem logical that either Clemens or the robbers would put up such a billboard. Why would either of them want the world to know about the robbery?
Well, I thought, I had never heard about this robbery before, and it certainly had little impact on Twain, Virginia City, or his career, so why bother with it? I decided to try to dig into it at some future date. I kicked the billboard to verify it was real and that I had not entered the Twilight Zone. It was real.
Fast forward 20 years. Today, Mark Twain’s name jumped up, and so did the mental image of that billboard along with the mystery of what actually happened at that location 130 years ago, and why? With nothing better to do, I dusted off my amateur detective license, turned on my computer, and began searching.
As each of Twain’s works surfaced, I soared away on his words into places and down avenues that were part true and part fiction, wrapped in humor or wisdom, sometimes both. After about two hours I had read a lot of the stuff that I had eluded for so many years. Damn, he was good. How he managed to write so much, so well without a laptop or spell check, boggles the mind. And his presentation skills must have been something to behold. He went on a tour of city after city giving “lectures” on how to commit 462 sins or crimes—but once—thence to hold yourself out as a highly moral person. And why not? After your pillaging and plundering you would have nothing more to do on the immoral side.
And now back to the reason for the search—the Twain highway robbery. As it turned out, the billboard was true —as far as it went. Twain himself retold the story of how he was robbed, what was taken, and his personal heroism during the entire ordeal in one of his novels. But I am not going to reveal more about his ordeal nor his bravery here. You will have to read his novel for yourself in order to unravel this mystery.
I can leave you hanging and say all this with a clear conscience. Reading Mark Twain is good for your soul, good for your moral standing, and good for your claim to having a well-rounded education. And as a writer, you owe it to yourself to seek out the truth of the matter and to absorb from America’s best.
I will tell you this much: The complete account is found somewhere in his novel, Roughing It. That should be a simple enough task. It’s only 79 chapters long.
I think there's more than a little Huckleberry Finn in your telling. Mark Twain's works are worth revisiting.
Reviewed by Melissa Mendelson
12/21/2013
I never read Mark Twain. I too am lazy and prefer the works of Stephen King and Anne Rice, but I do know better. So, maybe at some point in-between writing, I'll check out that novel and learn more about Twain being robbed. Good story. :)
This article or personal story is dear to my heart. One could only wish to write for everyman like Samuel Clemens. I, too, have touched on places that Mark Twain lived and worked. San Francisco, Twain-Harte, where I stayed while skiing at Dodge Ridge in 1966, Virginia City in 1968 returning from a three day weekend to the Baja Peninsula and Elmira, NY while on a two-week trip from San Francisco to Expo 67 in Montréal and return.
I have read Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, but not Roughing It. If I want to solve the mystery you propose, all I have to do is a Google search rather than searching through 79 chapters. ;-)
Once, when I visited Reno (for cheap breakfast, not gambling) there was a terrible windstorm. As I drove out of town I noticed a marquee for a drive-in theater. The movie playing was Gone with the Wind. A number of the letters were blown off by the wind, but I could still make out what the movie was. Later I saw it pictured in an article. But I got to witness the event right after it happened… Quite a coincidence.
Not sure I liked this because it ties so many places and lives together and strings them out. I know (of) too many of the places and characters, so you've made me feel something more than 130 years old. On the other hand, I'm in damn good health for that age and enjoyed your journey very much on several levels. Well done.
Great little story. I could not wait to get to the end. Unfortunately the answer did not await me, but it was OK. Nice clue with the 79 chapters to help figure out which novel.
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The Day Mark Twain was Robbed by Masked Gunmen
