This film has been preserved by National Film Preservation Foundation - filmpreservation.org.
The film was considered lost until 1962, when a 35mm archive copy was discovered in Denmark. In 2006, George Eastman House began restoration of the film, re-translating from Danish to English and recreating the color tinting. Unfortunately, many of the film's colloquialisms were lost in translation and had to be speculatively recreated using the initial novel and press material related to the film's initial release for references. As of 2011, no existing copies of the original English language version are known to exist.
The 1,000th film to have its restoration funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
In order to add authenticity to their recreation of the film's lost intertitles, the George Eastman House chose to emulate the typeface and framework of the ones found on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920); a film released the same year as Huckleberry Finn.
The appearances of the film's characters are modeled after the illustrations of E. W. Kemble which appeared in 1885 edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.