From The San Francisco Daily Morning Call, June 25, 1864:  If one tire of the drudgeries and scenes of the city, and would breathe the fresh air of the sea, let him take the cars and omnibuses, or, better still, a buggy and pleasant steed, and, ere the sea breeze sets in, glide out to the Cliff House . . . perched on the very brink of the ocean, like a castle by the Rhine, with countless sea-lions rolling their unwieldy bulks on the rocks within rifle-shot. Steamers and sailing craft are passing, wild fowl scream, and sea-lions growl and bark, the waves roll into breakers, foam and spray, for five miles along the beach, beautiful and grand, and one feels as if at sea with no rolling motion nor sea-sickness, and the appetite is whetted by the drive and the breeze, the ocean's presence wins you into a happy frame, and you can eat one of the best dinners with the hungry relish of an ostrich. Go to the Cliff House. -- Mark Twain

Twain was hired as a reporter on the Morning Call in June 1864, where he spent mid-morning to two a.m. going to saloons, operas and police courts for bits of news, according to Taper in Mark Twain in San Francisco. It was a brutal job, and Twain’s differences of opinion with the paper’s owner George Barnes soon came to a breaking point. In one instance, Twain wrote a story about Irish hoodlums who were stoning a Chinese laundryman while the police looked on with amusement, only to find the story nixed by Barnes. Barnes claimed that the Call was the paper of the poor and depended on the support of Irishmen. After four months, Twain was fired by the Call, and began writing for journals such as Golden Era, the Californian, the Sacramento Union, the San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle and the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. --Thalia Gigerenzer

Some of Twain’s most entertaining articles are his earthquake articles, which are surprisingly poetic. On October 8, 1865, a relatively big earthquake struck while Twain was walking along Third Street near Mission. “Such another destruction of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before,” he writes in Roughing It. -- Thalia Gigerenzer

The famed Montgomery Block building was the literary hangout of the era, and Twain wan't the only aspiring writer and artist who frequented its bars and dining rooms. Jack London, Lola Montez, Maynard Dixon and Ambrose Bierce were Montgomery Block patrons in their time, and the "Monkey Block" was a magnet for luminaries and wannabes from the fields of finance and law, as well.

Here, Twain slung drinks and traded tales with writers from the Golden Era, San Francisco Argonaut and other local publications. And in the Turkish bath at Montgomery Block, Twain played penny ante with a man named Tom Sawyer. Sawyer later hung a sign outside his tavern near Third and Mission: ALE AND SPIRITS: THE ORIGINAL TOM SAWYER.

The Montgomery Block was demolished in 1959, but it's remembered for its historic importance as a bohemian center of the city. The site later became a parking garage, and the Transamerica Pyramid stands there today.

A reader sent in a tip saying he recently visited the Pied Piper Bar at the Palace Hotel, where historical notes claim Twain as a Piper patron.

When 28-year-old Mark Twain landed in San Francisco in May of 1864, he fully expected to strike it rich--not by writing, but by speculating. His first choice of residence matched his millionaire daydreams. He spent his first few months living at the Occidental Hotel on Sutter and Montgomery, where the 31-floor Rush Building now stands. The four story, Italianate-style Occidental Hotel was one of the grandest hotels in town, occupying the entire east side of Montgomery Street from Sutter to Bush. Twain blew much of his $35 dollar a week reporter's salary on his room and on the hotel's decadent shellfish buffets. Dwindling funds forced him to relocate within months of his arrival.

Another of Twain's cushy hotel digs. Erected in 1861, Lick House was the pet project of California land baron and renaissance man James Lick, who set out to build the finest hotel west of the Mississippi. The dining room sat 400, modeled on a banquet hall in the Palace of Versailles. The hotel went down in flames in 1906.