1 The Echo Gold and Silver Mining Company had incorporated in San Francisco on 22 April 1863 (“Rush for Mining Claims Continued,” San Francisco Alta California, 23 Apr 63, 1). The mine was located a quarter mile north of Devil’s Gate near the road to Gold Hill, Nevada. Evidence that Clemens had at least a small share in the Echo is provided by the surviving fragment of a 16 April 1870 letter (CU-MARK) in which an unidentified correspondent in Grand Rapids, Michigan, reminded him: “Sometime in the latter part of April 1863. You and I were at the Boston Mine afterwards known as the Echo Mine situated and being in Gold Hill near the devil’s Gate. . . . it was on the occasion of my getting Fritz [J. S. Fretz, one of the Echo incorporators] to give you an order for ten (10) shares of the stock of that company. (The Echo).” Clemens’s 1863 letters to the San Francisco Morning Call suggest that he desired to puff the value of Echo stock, possibly because he was a shareholder. On 12 July he wrote that the dollar value of Echo’s “first-class ore goes clear out of sight into the thousands. The Echo is probably the richest mine in Gold Hill District” (SLC 1863 [MT00172], 1). One week later he again informed his readers of progress in the mine’s development and of its “very valuable stock” (SLC 1863 [MT00177], 1). Finally, on 8 August he reported of the Echo that “from five to seven tons of ore, ranging in value from $1,500 to $3,000 a ton, have been taken from it daily and shipped to the Bay, with occasionally a few hundred pounds of $10,000 rock. The yield now is in the neighborhood of ten tons a day” (SLC 1863 [MT00184], 1). This publicity may have helped inflate the market value of Echo stock, which in mid-July reached an asking price of $140 a share in San Francisco, with $100 bid. Within six months the stock was selling for $27 (“Stock Sales at the Bay Last Week,” Virginia City Evening Bulletin, 20 July 63, 2; “San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board, Jan. 11, 1864,” San Francisco Alta California, 12 Jan 64, 6). Clemens is not known to have made further mention of the Echo mine at this time. In May 1864, just prior to his departure from Virginia City for California, Echo miners uncovered a new “exceedingly rich streak” of gold-bearing rock, expected to assay “from $1,500 to $2,000 per ton” (“The Echo,” Virginia City Union, 31 May 64, 3). These potential riches were apparently never realized. Four years later, when writing to the Chicago Republican about Nevada claims that had proved to be “essentially and outrageously wildcat,” Clemens lamented: “Oh where is the wonderful Echo?” (SLC 1868, 2).

2 Neither Clemens’s enclosures nor “those girls” have been identified.