VIEWS
FROM THE
PAST
Rrashear Coll., St. Hist. Soc. Mo.
One of Missouri's best-known authors, Mark Twain was born November 30, 1835,
in the two-room cabin (above), near Florida, Missouri. The first home of Twain, or Samuel
Langhorne Clemens, is today housed in the Mark Twain Birthplace Memorial Shrine
(below), which also includes a museum and is surrounded by a 1,192-acre state park. The
site is maintained by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks
and Recreation. Just a few years after Twain's death, April 21, 1910, a memorial park association purchased 100 acres of land where the famed Missourian lived. The state added
another 1,092 acres and formed the first state park north of the Missouri River in 1924.
Hadley K. Irwin, Mo. St. Park System
