The following maps depict the most developed and populated areas of Nevada Territory as of May 1864, when Clemens ended his residence of almost three years and moved to San Francisco. But they also represent the territory essentially as it was throughout his stay—excepting the boundary with California, not established until 1863; the town of Austin, also established in 1863; Roop County, called Lake County through 1862; and Lander and Nye counties, created in 1862 and 1864. Map 1, Principal Mining Regions of Nevada Territory, 1864, provides an overview of the areas in which Clemens lived and worked between 1861 and 1864, first as Orion Clemens’s legislative clerk, then as a miner, and finally as a journalist. Map 2, Carson City, Virginia City, and Environs; Map 3, Humboldt Mining Region; and Map 4, Esmeralda Mining Region, correspond to the boxes on Map 1 and provide greater detail.

All four maps are based on DeGroot’s Map of Nevada Territory, Exhibiting a Portion of Southern Oregon & Eastern California (San Francisco: Warren Holt, 1863), the most detailed and accurate contemporary map of the territory. Its creator, Henry DeGroot, was Nevada’s pioneer cartographer, commissioned by the Territorial Legislature in 1861 to do the first map of the region ( Journal of the Council , 54, 76). The base map has been corroborated by, and in a few instances corrected or supplemented from, other contemporary maps (three of them by DeGroot himself) as well as modern maps prepared by the United States Geological Survey. For example: DeGroot’s misplacement of Unionville in Star District and his mislabeling of Rough Creek have been corrected on Maps 3 and 4, respectively; his omission of Devil’s Gate, King’s Cañon, Gold Cañon, and Clear Creek District has been remedied on Map 2. DeGroot’s representation of lakes, sinks, sloughs, and tributaries sometimes differs from other maps, both contemporary and modern, but the mutable, even seasonal, nature of these features obviates any correction. On the other hand, his perfunctory and idiosyncratic notation for mountain ranges is here replaced with a notation that better indicates size and extent. In reducing the dimensions of DeGroot’s map (ca. 32″ × 38″) we have necessarily omitted some details—such as “American Flat,” “Chalk Knoll,” and “Blue Supper D[istrict]” in the congested area around Virginia City on Map 2—but all details relevant to Clemens’s Nevada letters have been retained. Place names and county and territorial boundaries have been corroborated by the standard historical sources (Angel, Carlson, Swackhamer). And some elements on Map 3 have been supplied from Clemens’s own accounts of his journey to the Humboldt mining region (see pp. 147–50 here and chapter 27 of Roughing It) as well as from an anonymous account of the same trip, published in “Letter from Nevada Territory” (San Francisco Alta California, 18 June 63, 1). To help coordinate these maps with the letters and with each other, we have added legends like “SLC’s route to Ragtown” and “To Aurora and Mono Lake,” which are not in DeGroot. The draft maps prepared at the Mark Twain Papers were redrawn by John R. Parsons and Mark Williams of Eureka Cartography, Berkeley, California.