lecturer named Samuel L. Clemens. From his room that night the lonesome traveler wrote a literary classic to his girl Livvy in New York state. It is now published among the Love Letters of Mark Twain, including the El Paso dateline but without once mentioning the town or what he was doing in it. The letter concerned things that Clemens thought was the more important at the moment.

The Campbell House had cost its young owner $10,000; this was a huge sum in those times for a young man to raise. But the war boomed his business as it did the town, and the fame of the fine hotel spread all over the midwest. It became the landmark of El Paso. The mention of it was commonplace in distant states well into the twentieth century.

George Williamson, old time resident of both the Secor and El Paso areas, who traded in Kansas farmland when that state was young, once got off a train at Spivey, Kansas, and had to walk to Rago to find a room for the night. Inquiring of an old native with a basket on his arm about a hotel, Williamson mentioned that he was from about thirty-three miles east of Peoria, Illinois.

"Why, that must be El Paso," the Kansan replied, and then asked, "Is the Campbell House still operating?"

George told him that it was, and inquired how he knew about that building.

"I ought to know something about it," the old fellow said, "for I built it, and I remember I used to go down to the Kappa bridge and fish every Sunday morning while I was working on it." The man’s name was Johnson.

Touring Canada, Judge Horace H. Baker lost his re-entry papers. It was in the early twenties as he tried to make his return to the United States at the northeast woods station of Jackman, Maine. In his predicament, he was taken before a second customs official, to whom Baker explained, "I live in Illinois, at a small town you've never heard of called El Paso."

"Is that so?" the customs stranger replied. "Well I'm telling you right now that if the Illinois Central hasn't fixed up that terrible Campbell House crossing since the last time I saw it, you'd better see that it's done when you get home."³

The man had been a recruiting officer in World War I and had lived in a car on the siding near the Campbell House during 1918. Needless to say, Judge Baker had a nice visit and no further trouble in returning to the United States.

Eleven local people and four from Tonica boarded a Niagara Falls excursion train at the Campbell House about ten o'clock the evening of August 10, 1887. Peter Roth and Albert Theveene were from Panola; others were Mr. and Mrs. Henry Hart and their two daughters; Albert E. Fleming and Lewis M. Kerr, Mrs. J. D. Connell, Charles Tapley and Samuel Glass. The heavy twenty-two car train left Peoria

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