Mark Twain's Virginia City newspaper office is no more

This column originally appeared in the Reno Gazette Journal on Dec. 2, 2004.

Tourists by the thousands flock to Virginia City every year in search of the Wild West and evidence of Mark Twain's time on the Comstock. Anybody who knows anything about Samuel Clemens in Nevada knows he was a reporter for Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise newspaper in the early 1860s and adopted the pen name Mark Twain.

Many of the visitors want to see where the aspiring young writer worked and find their way to the Territorial Enterprise building and Mark Twain Museum on South C Street between Union and Taylor. But did Twain work there or ever set foot in the building?

The simple answer is no, much to the dismay of those who would like to believe otherwise.

Even respected historians such as Richard Lin