Photograph of Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site — Photograph by C.Pederson, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Mark Twain Birthplace Cabin

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

From the record

“The Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site is a publicly owned property near Florida, Missouri, maintained by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, that preserves the cabin where the author Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835. The cabin is protected within a modern museum building that also includes a public reading room, several of Twain's first editions, a handwritten manuscript of his 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and furnishings from Twain's Connecticut home.”
Wikipedia article Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 8 National Register listings published here for Monroe County · listed in 1969 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Listed as. Twain, Mark, Birthplace Cabin - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Mark Twain State Park, 2.5 mi. S of Florida on MO 107, Florida, 65283
When was it listed? May 1969
Category. building
Township. Jefferson township
National Register reference number. 69000116 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

3,218 words

The chapter on Jefferson Township in History of Monroe and Shelby Counties, Missouri, published 1884 names Florida. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

The business done by the mills from 1845 to 1860, was perhaps the largest milling business ever done in the county. Large quantities of flour were hauled regularly to Hannibal and Mexico, and shipped from thence to St. Louis, until the Hickman flour was well known at one time in that city. Hugh A. Hickman ran out several boats loaded with flour to Louisiana, on the Mississippi, at the mouth of Salt river, and brought back one boat lightly loaded with sugar, cofl'ee and other articles of merchandise. Florida was declared the head of navigation on Salt river, and was thought by those brave and ambitious pioneers to be a favorable point for the founding of a great commercial town. The town was accordingly laid ofi" by Maj. Wm. N. Penu, Hugh A.

Passage source: History of Monroe and Shelby Counties, Missouri, published 1884.

Hickman and others, and although the bright dreams which swelled the hearts of these noble pioneers were not realized, Florida has always held the rank of a respectable and enterprising village. From this point and vicinity have emanated some of the most prominent business men of North-east Missouri, as well as Mark Twain, a writer of national reputation, and probably the most celebrated humorist ever produced by the United States.

Passage source: History of Monroe and Shelby Counties, Missouri, published 1884.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Jefferson Township - 3,218 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

1 since 1997

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Mark Twain Birthplace Cabin in 1997, burning about 8 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
28 August 1997	Debris and open burning	8.0 acres	Missouri Department of Conservation	not named

Every fire recorded in Monroe County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Mark Twain Birthplace Cabin: 4 past producers. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Clay, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Unknown	Clay	Past Producer
Unknown	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer

Every working recorded in Monroe County

Storms near this property

5 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Florida, the town this property stands in, in 5 storm reports between 1999 and 2013: 3 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
May 2013	Thunderstorm Wind	Florida	-	Several large tree limbs were blown down.
October 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Florida	-	Several trees were blown down in the Mark Twain State Park's Puma Campground. One tree landed on a small camping trailer causing minor damage. None of the 4 occupants were injured by the fallen tree. Also, the park office sustained minor damage.
May 2003	Hail	Florida	-	The Sheriff Department reported 3/4 inch hail.
July 2002	Thunderstorm Wind	Florida	-	Amateur Radio spotters reported trees down on Route U.
January 1999	Hail	Florida	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Monroe County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

2 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Photograph	Property	Distance	Listed
	Merritt Violette House	2.2 miles	1983
	Mark Twain State Park Picnic Shelter at Buzzard's Roost	3.6 miles	1985

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 69000116 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Monroe County	All 8 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.