Finding Mark Twain’s Hannibal

by Terrell Dempsey

I have spent three delightful days in Hannibal, loitering around all day long, examining the old localities and talking with the grey-heads who were boys and girls with me 30 or 40 years ago.

~ Mark Twain to Livy, May 17, 1882

Any modern pilgrim seeking the real Mark Twain will find his Mecca in a little town nestled in Bear Creek Valley on the Mississippi River some 90 miles north of St. Louis. It was Hannibal, Missouri and the river that defines it, where Twain consistently re-returned in his literature.  Tom Sawyer, a children's book, Huckleberry Finn, from whic...