Photos: Mark Twain’s legacy in Hannibal, Mo.
Hannibal’s Main Street, above, served only about 700 residents in 1839 when the Clemens family arrived in town with 4-year-old Sam. The population grew to 4,000 over the next 13 years. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born about 40 miles southwest in Florida, Mo. Hannibal is still a smallish town of about 17,500, of middling prosperity about 100 miles northwest of St. Louis. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The Hotel Mark Twain, which opened in 1905 when the author was still alive, is now an apartment building for seniors. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The Mark Twain Memorial Shrine building, part of the Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site in Florida, Mo., houses the cabin where Mark Twain was born in 1835. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The Garth Woodside Mansion Bed & Breakfast, a three-story 19th century building in Hannibal, housed Mark Twain on visits during the late 19th century. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
A room in the Garth Woodside Mansion Bed & Breakfast. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
From the dining room at the Garth Woodside Mansion Bed & Breakfast in Hannibal, guests can see meadows and neighboring woods. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
This photo of Twain in his later years is part of a display at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal. The famed author of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” was born on Nov. 30, 1835, just weeks after Halley’s Comet’s closest approach to Earth. He died of a heart attack in Redding, Conn., on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet’s closest approach to Earth. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
