John Mackay and Mark Twain: Mining and Literary Titans of the Comstock Lode, a Unique Friendship

John Mackay was born in Ireland in a peat hut his family shared with a pig. He arose from these simple beginnings to become one of the wealthiest men in the world. After emigrating to America with his family, Mackay traveled west and earned his fortune as a miner and entrepreneur in Virgina City, Nevada. His vast fortune afforded him the opportunity to associate with the elite of European society, serving as the United States’ ambassador to the coronation of the Czar Alexander III and taking up residence in a mansion next to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. While he was superintendent at the Bullion Mine in Virginia City, Mackay met a neophyte reporter for the Territorial
Enterprise named Samuel Clemens, who would take on the pen name Mark Twain and become known as America’s most unique literary voice. Explore what brought these two disparate but accomplished men together, and what kept them friends once they left the small Nevada mining town and stepped out on to the world stage.