Virginia City's Celebrities

There were a couple of celebrity characters in Virginia City in the 1860s and 1870s.  One involved the Territorial Enterprise, a freewheeling, uninhibited, frontier piece of journalism run by Joseph T Goodman and Dennis McCarthy.  One of their first reporters was a young man of 30 named Samuel Clemens, who had began using the pen name of Mark Twain in 1863.  Sam was not content to stick to bare bone facts.  Better yet, he liked to let his imagination take flight as he did with his 1865 short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County".  Twain was on his way - reporting for the highly successful Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City by 1870.

Another character of Virginia City arrived  in 1864.  A famous actress, Adah Isaacs Menken was persuaded to come to Virginia City to perform by Tom Maguire, who owned the local opera house.  Legends of her past proceeded her and the townspeople were thrilled at the prospect of her arrival.

Menken's Jewish parents were from New Orleans where Adah learned French, German, Spanish and Hebrew and translated Homer's Iliad from Greek.  She was skilled in dancing, singing and riding.  She matured into an uninhibited and temperamental beauty and launched two separate careers.  As a poetress, she won praise from poets and her friends included Charles Dickens and Walt Whitman.  As an actress, she was all the rave in London, Paris and New York and the American West.

Menken's most sensational role was in Mazeppa, which played to a standing room only crowd in Virginia City.  She disrobed on stage (actually wearing flesh colored tights) and was tied to a snorting horse.  Proper Victorians were shocked of course, but enthusiastic Virginia City miners made her an honorary fireman.  Mark Twain compared the act to acrobatics rather than acting in the Territorial Enterprise. 

Adah was married four times (Isaacs her second husband, Menken her fourth) and responding to gossip about her love affairs, she said, "I never lived with Houston, it was General Jackson and Methuselah and other big men." 

Next time..The Stagecoach Cometh
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  " On August 10, 1846, the Smithsonian is created after a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist.   President James K. Polk signed the Smithsonian Institution Act into law.

Pioneer Pieces: The Virginia City Territorial Enterprise

Of all the frontier newspapers, Virginia City's The Territorial Enterprise, was the best known and most colorful.  The newspaper began in Mormon Station (the staging station), then moved to Carson City, and finally to Virginia City with the first pioneers.  For years, The Territorial Enterprise was a strong voice of authority in the mining world.

What made the newspaper so colorful was those on its staff - like Mark Twain (note: Samuel Langhorne Clemens was actually a very humble, quiet man).

Working with Mark Twain was Joe Goodman, Fred Hart, Wells Drury, Rollin Dagget and William Wright.  Wright wrote under the pen name of Dan De Quille.  His Big Bonanza, was recognized as an authoritative history of Nevada in his time.

For More on Frontier Newspapers, see the post on The San Francisco Chronicle
Next time...the effect of the Comstock on the nation

Pioneer Pieces: Full Steam Ahead!

By the 1840s steamboats had become part of the American River Folklore. Originally they were used as rescue boats prior to flood control along the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. Even after the railroads came through, steamboats were still used in floods because between a flood and a railroad, the railroad never wins.

Pioneers who lived along the riverbanks had their own way of surviving a flood - they would load a flatboat raft with all of their possessions and livestock and literally "ride the storm out".

Steamboats became the "Queens of the River", the "Titanic of the River" and afforded the passengers the most modern and luxurious accommendations of all travel, including the popular ship design in Rococo.

Best known steamboat advocate, Mark Twain, penned his best work aboard his beloved riverboats. He claims he got the pen name Mark Twain from a Mississippi steamboat captain name Jonas Sellers.

Next time - Man the Lifeboats!