Steven Saylor and Tom Hayward
Among the 200 Twain scholars I’ve communed with over the past 40 years, Virginia City has been their biggest disappointment. Hannibal, Hartford and Elmira boast Mark Twain’s profile in grand style, and our Comstock Fathers & Mothers should visit there.
Mark Twain has a wider reputation, is better known nationally and world-wide than Virginia City, and many Comstock residents would be quite surprised to hear that.
It’s time we recognize and celebrate the literary birthplace of America’s best loved author, Mark Twain; time for Virginia City to take her rightful place of honor as the lodestone of the enduring literary compendium of one Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Commemorate it and they will come.
Our intrepid Executive Director of the Comstock Foundation for History & Culture, Steven Saylor, along with the propitious new owner and renovator of the Territorial Enterprise Building, Tom Hayward, will be leading the way.
I see a new dispensation dawning over Virginia City…
With great love for the Comstock Lode,
I remain your faithful servant and friend,
McAvoy Layne