The Gillis Cabin, Jackass Hill, 1895

Courtesy of John Meiser. At the time this photograph was taken, a number of miners and prospectors were living in the cabin. Second from left is Meiser’s father, Frederick, seventeen years old, who worked at the Longfellow Mining Company; Jim Gillis is seated next to the door. What the Gillis cabin looked like in 1864–65, while Clemens stayed there, is not known. The photographs below and on the next few pages show the cabin increasingly dilapidated during the latter part of the nineteenth century, torn down, and then “rebuilt” in the early twentieth century. The rebuilt cabin, reconstructed yet again in the early twenty-first century, still stands as California Historical Landmark 138.