BIOGRAPHIES & PROFILES
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BRET HARTE and MARK TWAIN in the Gold Country
Part of the literary history of the Gold Country is tied to an unlikely trio -- a foppish urbanite named Bret Harte; a rambunctious migrant called Mark Twain; and a frog. Bret Harte mined sporadically throughout the Southern Mines, moving as far north as Angels Camp. He eventually wound up at the Gillis Brothers' cabin on Jackass Hill a few miles south of town. Strapped for cash and longing to return to his family in Oakland, Bret Harte's stagecoach passage home was paid for by the kindly Gillis family. Harte left the goldfields and never returned. The dudish Bret Harte was more at ease in cosmopolitan San Francisco. He embarked on a successful writing and publishing career. His works featured vignettes of life in the mining camps. His short-lived visit to the Gold Country provided a lifetime of material. Angels is considered the likely locale for one of Harte's most famous stories, "The Luck of Roaring Camp." Harte is still a very visible presence in the Mother Lode town of Angels Camp -- the high school in the community is named "Bret Harte High School." Samuel Clemens, a year older than Bret Harte, arrived in the West in 1861. Prior to that year, he had been a Mississippi Riverboat pilot, a printer, a newspaper reporter, and even endured a two-week tenure as a Confederate soldier. Samuel had come west in the company of his brother Orion, the newly appointed governor of Nevada Territory. Samuel Clemens lived in the same rough cabin as Harte, and prospected with the Gillis Brothers. But as winter turned bitter, Sam and the Gillis boys spent more and more time at the saloon in the Angels Hotel. It was there, on a cold February night in 1865, that Samuel Clemens first heard the tale of the jumping frog from bartender Ben Coon. He hiked back to his cabin and wrote his version of the fable -- "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Ah, Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens. The Jumping Frog. But ... you might ask, are you saying that Mark Twain did not invent the story? That's right. By 1865, the jumping frog story was already a fireside classic in the mining camps. Oh, the names were different, the amount of buckshot in the frog's belly varied, but the broad outline was well established. However, Twain's description of the storyteller Simon Wheeler, the frogmaster Jim Smiley, and the celebrated jumping frog Dan'l Webster, the "beast in a little lattice box" who was stuffed with quail shot, was the first published version of the tale. Mark Twain gets the credit. The Jumping Frog made Mark Twain a celebrity. It also made Angels Camp famous. By the 1920s, the dirt streets of Angels were in deplorable condition. In 1927, a bond issue was approved to pave Main Street. To celebrate this momentous occasion, the Angels Camp Boosters organized a ceremony. It was a visiting minister, The Reverend Mister Brown, who suggested tying the event to the famous Twain story. In May 1928, the first Jumping Frog Jubilee was the result. More than 15,000 attended the frog-jumping contest held on the newly paved Main Street of Angels Camp. For the record, the winning entry was "The Pride of San Joaquin," The li'l beauty leaped 3'6". Soon afterwards a monument to the frog was erected in town. Still standing today, it features a foot-tall squatting frog atop a stone base. Originally the frog was golden, but over the years tourists have chipped away the gild. It is good ol' frog green now.
Gary Noy
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