A pair of Mark Twain enthusiasts who have searched for more than two decades say theyve found what appears to be Samuel Clemens signature from his youth scrawled on the wall of the Missouri cave he made famous in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
In the mid-1800s, long before he took on the pen name Mark Twain, Clemens and his young pals romped around the cave near the Mississippi River on the outskirts of Hannibal.
As a group of Twain scholars toured what is now known as the Mark Twain Cave this summer, cave owner Linda Coleberd, self-proclaimed Twainiac Cindy Lovell and two others broke off in search of the long-elusive signature, which was long believed to be among the thousands of names signed on the caves limestone walls.
As Coleberd waved the groups lone flashlight around an otherwise dark area of the cave, Lovell says she happened to catch the beam of light as it shined on a signature: Clemens, written in pencil.
Lovell, former director of Hannibals Mark Twain Museum who now works in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, couldnt contain her excitement.
I started yelling, Clemens! Clemens! I see Clemens! she recalled.
It wasnt until weeks later that a high-resolution photo of the signature revealed Sam etched at the same place, indicating the signature was that of the famed author and not a relative.
The signature was discovered in July, but details werent announced until this week, only after several Twain experts were able to study the signature and determine it was almost certainly real.
Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, in 1835, but his family moved to Hannibal when he was 4. He stayed until he was 17, and the people and places he knew from the rough-hewn river town were fodder for his most famous works.
The cave itself became a tourist destination after the 1876 publication of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as people flocked to the place that inspired some of the books key adventures where Tom and Becky got lost, where Tom and Huck found the treasure box, and where Injun Joe died.
Today, the cave, 3 miles (5 kilometers) long, is among the most popular tourist sites in the town of 17,500 residents that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Each adult pays $19.95 for a one-hour cave tour.
Lovell and Coleberd have been searching for Clemens signature for a quarter of a century. It was a daunting task.
The caves size and popularity made finding any hint of Clemens signature difficult because the brown walls are covered with an estimated 250,000 names scrawled in everything from pencil to candle wax to berry juice. It wasnt until 1979, after the cave was named a National Historic Landmark, that writing on the walls was prohibited.
On July 26, Lovell and Coleberd decided to search again. While the scholars in town for a symposium known as the Clemens Conference toured the lit portion of the cave, they set out in a darkened area known to have thousands of signatures. Two men from the group tagged along.
The foursome had wandered for only a few moments when Lovell says she made her startling discovery. She took cellphone photos and immediately began sharing them with experts to authenticate the signature.
