The Mark Twain cabin, California Historical Landmark 138. A replica (constructed in 1922--though the fireplace and chimney are original) of the cabin on Jackass Hill, about 6 miles south of Angels Camp in California's Gold Rush Country, where Mark Twain (given name Samuel Langhorne Clemens) lived with the Gillis brothers (local miners) during the winter of 1864-'65. He arrived there on December 4, 1864, from San Francisco. It's the place where in early 1865 he wrote "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (eventually published in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865)--the very short story that first brought him national fame as a writer. A Google Earth street car perspective that I edited and processed through photoshop.

Here's the note Twain made in his notebook in January, 1865, while staying at Jackass Hill--the germ of the story that eventually became "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County:" "Coleman with his jumping frog — bet stranger $50 — stranger had no frog & C got him one — in the meantime stranger filled C's frog full of shot & he couldn't jump — the stranger's frog won."