If Mark Twain ambles into Angels Camp tomorrow morning and buys a cup of coffee at Rodz Grille, he can eavesdrop on the old-timers at the next booth -- and collect another half-dozen stories celebrating Calaveras County.

Storytelling is alive and well in Angels Camp. Just try and stop them.

There's the one about the newcomers who asked Sam Marshall to keep his rooster from crowing. Or the time the Grateful Dead came to town. Or how about those Goliath frogs from New Guinea? Legs as big as yer arm but couldn't jump worth a hoot.

Here's another that would certainly tickle Twain: This year, a squabble between the county fair board and local boosters captured headlines around the globe -- and catapulted the town's 2007 Jumping Frog Jubilee to record attendance.

Sam Clemens came to Angels Camp in 1865, when he fled San Francisco with the law on his heels to hole up in a miner's cabin on nearby Jackass Hill.

He spent two dreary winter months in the Mother Lode, eating "beans & dishwater" three meals a day and soaking up enough local color to launch himself into immortality as Mark Twain. Clinging to his famous coattails was a frog named Dan'l Webster -- and a certain California county.

The newspaperman's literary career was ignited by the title story in Twain's first book, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Nearly a century and a half later, his frog story still packs a kick:

"Frog Jumping World is Split in Twain over Money," reported the London Daily Telegraph in May. "Calaveras County Still Celebrates the Frog, but a Quarrel Has Dampened Spirits," trumpeted the New York Times.

The situation behind the headlines is quirky but hardly earth- shaking. The Angels Camp Boosters Club, creator of the frog jump in 1928, was irked at losing its stipend for running the annual contest and parted ways with the Calaveras County Fair.

The upshot was dueling frog jumps held May 20. The boosters' rival contest attracted a couple hundred competitors. But the official Jubilee at the fairgrounds was spectacularly successful, with more than 4,000 contestants, double the typical number.

"It's really true that any publicity is good," said Laurie Giannini, marketing director for the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee. "The last time we had attendance even close was in 1990 when those Goliath frogs competed."

Buck King remembers the giant frogs -- and plenty more, as a 30-year member of the boosters and former fair manager.

With his long memory, moustache and deadpan drawl, King might remind a fanciful listener of Simon Wheeler, who supposedly recounted the original frog story to Twain as they lounged "by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angels."

King, 65, is the man who brought the Grateful Dead to town, a fact that comes up pretty early in the conversation.

"And Santana," he said. "When I was special events director of the fair. Jerry Garcia was still alive then. I love the entertainment side."

So -- what happened when the Grateful Dead came to Calaveras County? "A lot of nudity," King said.

He also remembers the year that armed state Fish and Game officers cracked down on the Jubilee, concerned that the hundreds of bullfrogs gathered would endanger the native red-legged frog. King disagrees.

"I am an advocate of the frog," he said solemnly. "We would never hurt them. We keep the frogs in 10 tanks under the main stage -- we call them frog condos -- and feed them crawdads. And we always release them in the same area in which we caught them."

Do they ever eat them? King shook his head. "We have a saying here: Don't bite the leg that feeds you."

At 5:30 every morning, King and six or seven of his cronies gather for breakfast at Rodz Grille, a hot-rod-themed coffee shop on the north end of town. One regular is Sam Marshall, a fourth-generation son of Calaveras County who lives on 6.9 acres in town.

At an ungodly hour last week, Marshall, 69, grabbed his coffee cup and slid into a booth to chat with a visitor to Angels Camp. He spoke at a deliberate pace, gazing at the coffee's curling steam.

"My great-great-grandfather was the first white baby born in Calaveras County," he began. "I live about 200 yards from where I was born. There used to be 2,163 people in this town, and I knew 2,000 of them. There were eight bars -- now there's only the one.

"I have a barn that is 129 years old, built by my great-grandfather Marshall, who actually was a marshal here. He knew Joaquin Murietta. I have a letter from Joaquin Murietta, written with a quill pen."

Marshall invited the visitor out to see his old barn, a weather-beaten, rickety structure that looms directly above a sleek new housing development.

"The guy that built that development asked me to tear down the barn -- or paint it white," said Marshall, petting a horse who roams the barnyard like a dog. "This is Snickers -- she's real gentle. We got an owl in the barn, pure white with pink eyes." He paused to pull open the creaking barn door. "Hello, owl! Are you here?"

Marshall's conversation was punctuated continuously by the raucous crow of a rooster. He nodded toward the bird.

"Every morning at 4 a.m., he gets on top of the barn and crows. Some of the new people asked me if I could make him stop. I said: 'I'm not being smart, but we've been here four generations. If you don't like a rooster crowing, maybe you should put a for-sale sign on your house.' "

The uneasy mix of old and new is a common theme in Angels Camp. A main focus is a big development appropriately called Greenhorn Creek, where affluent retirees play golf, swim and live a country-club existence on the fringe of the dusty old gold camp.

"They come here because of the open space and the fresh air and no traffic," said long-time resident Tim Folendorf, voicing a frequent complaint. "And then they want all the amenities of the city they left. So we get a Starbucks and stoplights. They like curbs and gutters, but they don't like the Gun Club. It's been there since 1947, and now the newcomers are bitching about the noise."

Tim Folendorf is 65. His younger brother, Tad, is a former mayor of Angels Camp who served on the City Council for 20 years. He takes a more benevolent view of new development.

"I think the Greenhorn Creek project was good for the town -- it brought vitality and energy and new blood," Tad Folendorf said.

He's a partner in a project that he hopes will inject more vitality -- tours of the old Golden Cliff Mine, led by a knowledgeable young guide named Eli Fairchild.

Standing in the gaping portal of the mine, Folendorf said it symbolizes the new gold in the Gold Country: tourism. "For years, this old mine has been a liability," he said. "Now we're turning it into an asset."

With 1,000 miles of abandoned shafts crisscrossing beneath Angels Camp, that could be a big asset.

On Church Street, on a verdant hillside above the main drag, one newcomer is happily ensconced in an old-timer's house. Karen Henderson, a caterer, moved into the 1910 Cooper House in April to run it as a bed-and-breakfast and make a life for herself in Angels Camp.

Already, she's heard that the Grateful Dead came to town.

"Seems like everyone either played with them or slept with them," she said, laughing.

Raised in Sacramento, Henderson moved to the Gold Country 13 years ago. Now 37, she's lived in several towns up the slope, but she says Angels Camp is special.

"This place sang to me -- it has a lot of soul -- rustic and undiscovered, but with a degree of sophistication," she said. "There are so many positives to a small town. Everybody has a role, it seems, so you come with an instant identity. And everybody is at least an acquaintance."

That easy friendliness is something Emily Stemler loves about Angels Camp. After 85 years here, she should know.

She still works three days a week from 10 to 4, greeting visitors with a twinkle at the city museum, directly across Highway 49 from Rodz Grille. Surrounded by the silent artifacts of pioneer life, the lively little lady gives them a voice.

Of course she gives them a voice. She's another Angels Camp storyteller.

She remembers the first frog jump, back in 1928 -- "better than Fourth of July!" She remembers the Depression, when her mother took baskets of food from their ranch to help hungry friends in town.

She remembers the heyday of timber, when a steady stream of logging trucks rumbled and groaned down Main Street: "They'd come though town and gear down -- that's music to my ears."

Almost, it seems, she remembers Sam Clemens himself.

"Oh my goodness, yes, Mark Twain is part of us here," she said. A life-sized portrait of the author peered over her shoulder. "He worked in San Francisco, you know, then he came here to visit the Gillis brothers. They had a cabin up on Jackass Hill. ..."

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The Bee's Dorothy Korber can be reached at (916) 321-1061 or dkorber@sacbee.com.

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