Biography | Mark Twain — The Night He Signed the Name in Virginia City

People treat Mark Twain as a name he always had.

It first appeared in print on this street.

On 3 February 1863 the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise printed a Letter from Carson City that closed Yours, dreamily, MARK TWAIN.

That is the first time Samuel Clemens used the name in print.

He had arrived in Nevada Territory in 1861 with his brother Orion, who had been appointed territorial secretary.

Prospecting did not pay.

In the autumn of 1862 Joseph T. Goodman hired him as city editor at twenty-five dollars a week.

He had already sent the paper unsigned and Josh letters.

Goodman told him he could sign a name to the sketches that were not straight reporting.

The 3 February letter was written from Carson City and poked at a rival correspondent Clemens called the Unreliable.

Mark twain was a leadsman's call on the Mississippi: two fathoms, twelve feet, safe water for a steamboat in a channel.

He worked the Enterprise into 1864, then left for San Francisco.

The building at 53 South C Street is not the office he walked into in 1862.

The paper's first Virginia City rooms were on North C Street.

It later occupied a brick office at 24 South C Street.

The Great Fire of 26 October 1875 burned both.

The present brick building went up on the South C Street site; the paper's first issue from the new house ran on 1 February 1876.

A museum later installed a desk, presses, and composing stones and called them Twain's.

Treat the furniture as period, not proven relics.

The pin is the site the paper chose after the fire, and the place a visitor can still stand.

Photo: Jaydec, Territorial Enterprise building, 10 March 2010, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons