Author-Feature Speaker David Antonucci speaks about Mark Twain in Tahoe
David C. Antonucci, author, historian and regional expert on Lake Tahoe, Mark Twain, and the Olympic Games at the Lake, will speak on “Fairest Picture – Mark Twain at Lake Tahoe”, the first and only book devoted solely to chronicling Mark Twain’s experiences in the Lake Tahoe region to the Carson City Leisure Hour Club on Wednesday, May 21.
David’s interest in Mark Twain’s adventures at Lake Tahoe began when he enrolled in a community college class on Lake Tahoe history. For a term paper assignment, he chose to apply his civil engineering skills to analyze Mark Twain’s route and locations of his encampments at Lake Tahoe in 1861 based on the Roughing It account. This led to rediscovery of Mark Twain’s Ash Canyon-Washoe Trail route to Lake Tahoe and specific campsite locations on the North Shore.
Fairest Picture is the book Mark Twain fans and Lake Tahoe enthusiasts have longed for. For the first time, a single volume brings together Mark Twain and his favorite lake, Lake Tahoe. Inside you will find little known facts and newly discovered information about Mark Twain’s experiences and adventures at Lake Tahoe that cannot be found in any other books or on the web. You will read about Mark Twain’s Lake Tahoe of the early 1860s, how it is different today and still the same in many ways. We solve the riddle of where Mark Twain was camped and located his timber claim on the North Shore, exactly as he told the story in Roughing It and letters home. We describe Mark Twain’s subsequent trips to Lake Tahoe as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise and locate the hotels where he stayed and what he did while he was here as a tourist. We provide maps and directions to 12 Mark Twain places at Lake Tahoe and the surrounding area so that scholars and enthusiasts can visit these sites, see what Mark Twain saw and experience the same feelings that inspired him to write so eloquently about the lake. Inside is a complete listing of all known Mark Twain quotations about Lake Tahoe in his writings and lectures together with interpretation and context. We closely examine and debunk the many myths and tall tales about Mark Twain at Lake Tahoe and in particular, the often repeated East Shore timber claim legend. Readers will have a much deeper appreciation Mark Twain and the Lake Tahoe region, a place where he found his voice as a writer and humorist and went on to become one of America’s greatest authors.
Mr. Antonucci has enjoyed a public career of 35-plus years, including seven years as chief of regulation and enforcement for a water quality control board and 20 years as general manager and chief engineer of a multifunction special district in the Lake Tahoe area.
He has worked with and served on numerous public agency and nonprofit boards as a public official and private citizen. His civic involvement includes Tahoe Resource Conservation District, Association of California Water Agencies, Tahoe Sierra State Parks Foundation, Squaw Valley Olympic Museum and the Kiwanis Club of North Lake Tahoe.