Clairitage Press debuted with our first and best-loved book: Silver Mountain City: Ghost of the Sierra. Lavishly-illustrated with old photos and newspaper clippings, this fun and well-researched book brings Alpine County’s silver mining years to life.
Next came Historic Alpine: A Self-Guided Driving Tour of Woodfords, Diamond Valley, and Fredericksburg, offering a different window into Alpine County’s history from a “drive it to discover it for yourself” perspective.
Cemeteries, too, are a great source of local history, and through the pages of our self-guided walking tour, The Fredericksburg Cemetery you’ll meet many of Alpine County’s original settlers, prominent ranchers, and early county officials; even a tiny Welshwoman who foretold her own death.
The rollicking details of Markleeville’s early years are all here in A Self-Guided Walking Tour of Markleeville from the town’s first saloons and “hurdy house” to the spot where town founder Jacob Markley likely breathed his last in 1863.
We’ve also produced a handful of lovingly-crafted oral histories to help families pass down their stories, including the reminiscences of a true Alpine “mountain man.” And with a pair of local experts we’ve created a book on the culinary, medicinal, and practical uses of native Sierra plants. Stay tuned as we add more titles!
Here at Clairitage, our goal is preserving our vanishing heritage. We love what we do. We hope you will read, enjoy and treasure these special books for years to come.
About the Historian
Karen Dustman is a local historian and archivist whose work focuses on early Alpine County history. Over the past two decades, she has transcribed thousands of pages of primary documents, recorded dozens of oral histories, and reconstructed lost town plats for both Silver Mountain City and Markleeville using contemporary sources. She reorganized and re-identified major portions of the Alpine County Archives, including historically significant early land documents, and has written and presented extensively on local buildings, settlers, and historic sites. She is the author of King of the Comstock South: The Life, Letters, and Legacy of Lewis Chalmers (Fonthill Media/America Through Time).
Her work is grounded in the belief that small communities are shaped not only by well-known events, but by the daily lives, decisions, and relationships of the people who built them—many of whom are now forgotten outside of family memory. In Alpine County, where early records are scattered, fragile, or missing entirely, preserving local history requires more than retelling stories. It requires recovering original sources, identifying what they are, reconstructing what has been lost, and making the information accessible to the public in a way that is accurate, readable, and lasting.
A central part of Dustman’s historical work has been deep primary-source research in Alpine County’s earliest newspapers and surviving documents. She transcribed thousands of pages of letters and records connected to Lewis Chalmers, an early mining capitalist whose influence shaped the region’s development. These transcriptions preserved not only the content of the correspondence, but also the texture of the period: the practical realities of mining, investment, town-building, and the human ambitions and conflicts behind them. Dustman later expanded this work into a full-length book on Chalmers.
Dustman has also gathered dozens of oral histories from long-time residents and families in Alpine County and the adjacent county. Many of these accounts capture details that do not appear in official records—names, locations, relationships, and firsthand memories that would otherwise disappear within a generation. These oral histories have been essential in connecting documentary evidence with lived experience, and in preserving the stories of people who contributed to the county’s history but were never “official” enough to leave an obvious paper trail.
One of Dustman’s most distinctive contributions has been her reconstruction of the original town plat layouts for both Silver Mountain City (the original county seat) and Markleeville (the current county seat). Because the original maps have been lost, these town plats could not be consulted directly. Using a combination of period newspapers, legal documents, descriptions, advertisements, and small contextual “clues” that most readers would overlook, she was able to piece together the original configurations—identifying where buildings were located, how the towns were organized, and how their earliest development unfolded. This work preserved knowledge that had effectively vanished from the historical record.
Dustman also reorganized and corrected the Alpine County Archives, which had previously been arranged in a manner that made research difficult and, in some cases, misleading. Her work included matching indexes to their proper volumes, grouping like materials together, and rearranging records into a logical system that improved accessibility and reduced the risk of loss. With her legal background, she was able to identify the nature of older documents that had been misidentified, and to recognize the significance of records whose importance had gone unnoted.
Among the documents Dustman identified and documented was one of the oldest and most significant in the archive: an original deed connected to the townsite claim dated 1861. Recognizing and preserving such documents is critical in a county where foundational records are scarce and where many of the most important historical pieces can easily be overlooked, mishandled, or misunderstood.
In addition to archival and research work, Dustman has devoted extensive effort to public history and education. She has written and presented on Alpine County’s oldest buildings, early settlers, and significant local events. She authored a walking tour of the local cemetery, highlighting notable early residents and their roles in the county’s development. She also created a driving tour of historic sites that remain visible today, including locations many residents and visitors do not realize hold historical significance.
Dustman has given dozens of public talks and led guided walking tours for many years, including tours of the now-ghost town site of Silver Mountain City. Through these programs, she helped make Alpine County history tangible, place-based, and meaningful—not as nostalgia, but as an informed understanding of how the county came to be what it is.
Another important part of her work has been the identification and preservation of historic photographs and documents. Dustman gathered, identified, and facilitated donation of rare images and materials to the museum collection, helping ensure that these irreplaceable records were preserved for the future rather than lost in private holdings or dispersed without context.
Taken together, this large body of work represents a long-term commitment to preserving Alpine County’s history through original research, careful documentation, and public education. Dustman’s extensive and significant contributions have helped protect primary sources, recover lost historical information, and make local history accessible to the wider community. Her research has been generously shared through talks, tours, written guides, archival work, and published books, with the goal of ensuring that Alpine County’s story is not only remembered by future generations, but remembered accurately.