Ghosts of the Past: Mark Twain's Cabin Again

 In almost every blog entry I have written on here there have been mistakes. Some are not really important. I would put stuff like I went left when I went right, words left out or not making sense, etc. I have had stuff up for years only to find out, "Did I say that?! Good grief! I never meant that at all!"  For the most part, my readers have been forgiving about those sort of things. 

I have had a few contact me over a few things over the years were my locations were off. In one or two situations I was not trying to show the location of what they thought. Lol! In others there was a good reason that I was mistaken, and I just had not gotten around to updating what I had done. I have few like that I still want to take care of. 

This is one of those situations that no one has said anything to me about, but I have known I have been a bit off for quite some time. 

My original blog on this cabin: Aurora Ghost Town (Mark Twain)

Here is the reality of this situation...I don't care.

Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) lived at a variety of places in Aurora during his six months there. He lived with friends while there. There is a story that some woman took a piece of wood for this cabin and presented it to Mark Twain. His reply was something to the effect that he never owned a cabin in Aurora. 

So, in the blog above I ended up going a little further than I should have. At the time I did not have access to the older picture shown in this photo:

The above picture was taken in 2020. It is a little closer to where this cabin would have been. Notice that Lover's Leap can be seen in the background. That is key. 

When I went this last summer in 2023 I had forgotten I had taken the above picture. So I ended up a little further on East Pine St. than I should have. It is in the video that I note the mistake.

Again, it is a situation that I just do not care enough about. My apologies to any Mark Twain fans that this is important to them. There are certain things I bring up on this blog that are really important to me and others that are nice tidbits, but I just don't care that much about this compared to other things about Aurora. If you do care about this then let me link you to this article:

Mark Twain's Aurora Cabins - Site of his First Success

Heading back down west to Pine St. we see this:

Again, this would have been in 2020 when it was a lot less green and road eroded than in 2020. The Esmeralda Hotel and Courthouse would have been the building on the left.

In the next blog or two I will be heading back to the cemetery.

The Streets of Aurora 2.0 (Youtube)

Ghosts of the Past: The Streets of Aurora

 The video I link below gives you the two main streets that would have been the main intersection of Aurora: Antelope and Pine Streets. Those two streets are where most of the business, drinking, and gambling would have taken place. There were other streets around the town. On those streets there would have been cabins and houses people would have lived. After the years of the first mining boom and until the 20th century, most people that lived in Aurora would have lived peaceful lives. I tend to focus on the "wild west" era so just about everything I talk about in the video is from the early 1860s when there was a lawless element at Aurora. 

Now a reminder about the town, there is nothing really there in the town anymore. Around the time of World War 2 many people came to Aurora to take the bricks of the buildings for use elsewhere. You can find some of the foundations of the buildings while looking at the remains. However, some of the fun is trying to recreate the town from the pictures we have. 

For example, looking east on Pine Street:

This picture taken from 2020 combined with the black and white picture gives you an idea of how the buildings would have been on the Pine Street looking east. The Exchange Saloon would have been right next to where two adults and kid are on the right side of the picture. That was the most important saloon in town and most of the "wild west" action happened there.

At this point, I want to mention the mistake I back in 2011. I assumed the name "Exchange" was the name of something called the "Merchants Exchange Hotel" which would have been a few hundred feet behind me on West Pine Street. I had seen the name "exchange" in print so many times that I assumed they were all the same. Recently, I read there was another "exchange "saloon on the lower level/basement of the courthouse. Each time I come to Aurora I learn something new. 

Going up the road one eventually encounters this:

This is The Last Chance Saloon foundations. 

The road eventually splits. The side of the road on the left continues Pine Street. If one goes right then it is Wide West Street that takes you here:

This is where the Daly Gang house would have been. The Daly Gang was hired by one of the mining companies to protect their claims while they were settled in court. The gang of professional gunfighters eventually became deputy marshals in town due to one of the gang members being elected City Marshall. So, for about a year the gang controlled the town.

I am going to stop here for now. I will come back in a day or two for another blog entry on this town.

The Streets of Aurora 2.0 (Youtube)

My old blogs I did during 2011:

For my blog on the Daly Gang go HERE.

My old blogs on Aurora during 2011 go HERE.

More blogs I did on Aurora during 2011 go HERE.

Some of the books that are important about Aurora:

1)McGrath, Roger D. Gunfighters Highwaymen & Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier. University of California Press, 1984. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/3ejduebr McGrath's book is the classic for all the "wild west" information regarding Aurora and Bodie ghost towns. 2)Shaw, Clifford Alpheus. Aurora Nevada 1860-1960 : Mining Camp Frontier City Ghost Town. Second ed. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/bdd4pzeh Most people will want to get the paperback edition in the above link. This the best handbook for trying to "recreate" the town of Aurora. LOTS of pictures through the book. In fact, using this book and pausing my video might be the best way to appreciate the town! :) 3)Silver, Sue. Mineral County Nevada. Museum Ass. of Mineral County, 2011. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/wzjknjwa This book has a chapter on Aurora that was useful. 4)Shaw, Clifford Alpheus. The Last Days of the Daly Gang at Aurora Nevada. CreateSpace, 2014. Amazon link: https://tinyurl.com/bdd4pzeh This small book gives most of testimony people had in the days following the final murder committed by the gang up until they were hanged. I would recommend the McGrath book with the chapter on the gang first, then getting this one if you are looking for more information. It does include some of the location pictures of where things happened (kind of like what I did in the video).

Ghosts of the Past: Aurora, Nevada

So my series I have been calling Ghosts of the Past was not really meant to be just a October/Halloween series. It kind of worked out that way, but I knew I was going to be doing something that would take me into December. So here we are. This series was mostly me going back to places I have shown before on the blog and them being ghost towns or mines. It was primarily me updating a few things and adding a more up to date GoPro video. 

With that said, I love Aurora Ghost Town in Nevada, but I think I said most of what I wanted to say about the town back in 2011. I will link all those old blogs below in the next blog entry. So let me update you on what has happened.

Overlooking the town in 2023:

First, I did make some big mistakes that I tried to correct during that time. I have not looked, but I think Youtube took down the annotations I did to correct the errors I made. This was a big motivation for me to do another video and make things right. I will note them as we come to them.

Second, a few more books about the town have come out since I was last there. I will note those in the next blog or two, but it was really great getting lots of new information about the town and people that had inhabited it.

Third, I was in Aurora back in 2020. I am going to actually admit to you that I was much sharper in finding what I was after during that time than when I came in 2023. There is a reason for that. In 2020, I was still using my old-style camcorder, and it was about that time I was seriously thinking of shifting to GoPro. One thing I did not really want to give up was my ability to zoom in and out of places, but I knew it was time for me to switch video technology. This is one of the reasons I delayed talking about Aurora again. I meant to, but I knew I would probably be coming back.

I am going to use this blog to point out a few things, maybe a few more blogs to clarify some of the errors I made in 2011, and show what I did on the recent trips. 

 

So what made 2023 a much different year that 2020 or any other time I had been there in the past? Check out this picture of me looking towards the east of Pine Street.

Due to the winter/spring of 2023 the whole entire Eastern Sierra was much different looking than I was used to. I was walking around where this picture was taken and having a hard time identifying things as easily as I did in 2020. All the bushy plant life of Aurora was much bigger and green than I had ever seen before! Not only did I have a hard time walking around, but I had a harder time seeing where the roads would have been. 

Then just walking past the main intersection you could see parts of the road were washed out by the water that had come through here. The above picture is looking at where the Exchange Saloon would have been on the corner of Pine and Antelope Streets. You can see where the water came and washed this part out. It is shown more in the video I took as I mention it a few times. 

In the past I would see maps of where two areas of water would come through the town, and how they must have dug out parts of the area to allow for this. This time I could clearly see where an overwhelming amount of water had gone through the town earlier in 2023. There was a small stream going through the town during the summer. That I had never seen before.

You will see this in the video. So, I was a little disappointed in how that turned out. I truly hope that there is some repair work done on the roads since there was quite a bit of erosion that took place this past year. There were parts of these roads were there were big holes in.

Okay, I am going to stop here for the time being. I'll get back to this tomorrow.