Mark Twain Memorial Bridge (1936) Mark Twain Memorial Bridge (1936) The Mark Twain Memorial Bridge was a Cantilevered Through Truss Bridge carrying US 36 over the Mississippi River. It was replaced in 2000 with the extension of I-72 and subsequently demolished. The bridge, which replaced motor vehicle use of the Wabash Bridge, was opened in 1936 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and entered Missouri at the foot of Cardiff Hill which appeared in Twain's books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A crosswalk crossed the highway, connecting the Twain boyhood home with the lighthouse at the top of the hill.
Mark Twain whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say. Twain's story about his pen name has been questioned by some with the suggestion that "mark twain" refers to a running bar tab that Twain would regularly incur while drinking at John Piper's saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. Samuel Clemens himself responded to this suggestion by saying, "Mark Twain was the nom de plume of one Captain Isaiah Sellers, who used to write river news over it for the New Orleans Picayune.