Mark Twain Sets the Mountain on Fire
Near Tahoe City, California
In the late summer of eighteen sixty-one, a young, unknown newspaperman named Samuel Clemens hiked over the mountains to Lake Tahoe with a friend named John Kinney. They came to stake a timber claim, hoping to grow rich on timber. Clemens was dazzled by the lake.
Years later, writing as Mark Twain in his book Roughing It, he described the water as so clear that their boat seemed to float on air above the rocks far below. But his timber baron dreams ended in disaster. One evening he left his cooking fire unattended, and the flames raced into the dry brush and pine.
In his own words, within half an hour all before them was a tossing, blinding tempest of flame. The fire roared up the mountainside and destroyed their claim. The two men had to shove off in their boat and watch it burn.
They never sold a single log. It is a very human story, the future great American humorist accidentally torching the very forest he came to profit from. Today the story remains part of the lore of the lake.
