"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," written by Mark Twain in 1865, is an American short story in which Twain portrays the era of the American Wild West during the gold rush of the mid nineteenth century. Twain accomplishes this through his use of regionalism in which he uses the setting, customs, and native dialect of the time to tell a humorous tall tale. He pulls from his own experiences as a gold miner and refers to his fellow gold miners as people who often went mad from their labor (mibba.com). The story itself is set in the ancient mining camp called Angel's, which is located in Calaveras County. The narrator of the story finds a man named Simon Wheeler in an old tavern and he spins the humorous and exaggerated tale of a man named Jim Smiley, who was known for his outrageous betting schemes. Twain's humorous, exaggerated and satirical writing depicts the American westerner of this time as somewhat uneducated and stupid, in comparison to the narrator, who is from the East. The native dialect he employs virtually makes the reader feel as if he were listening to a gold miner from the American Wild West of 1849. .
Twain's choice of setting in this short story transforms you into what it might be like during the gold rush of 1849. The story is told in an "old, dilapidated tavern " at Angel's Camp, which is an ancient California mining town. A narrator from the East is inquiring about a man named Leonidus Smiley who was supposed to have lived in Angel's Camp. The man in the tavern, simon Wheeler, tells his tall tale about Jim Smiley of Calaveras County which was a gold rush county of California. The tale is a long, drawn out, exaggerated story about a betting and gambling man and how he ends up getting duped in the end by a stranger. American life on the western frontier during the mid-nineteenth century was all about the gold rush. Miners came from all over America and the world to try to make it rich.
