It lay near the intersection of the Old Emigrant Trail and a branch of the Blue Lead gold channel,[2] which enters Nevada County around Snow Point and leaves just east of Little York.

[4] By 1852, a substantial town has been established around a plaza, featuring stores, butchers, breweries, saloons, sawmills, a shoemaker, a meeting house and church and a theater.

"[7] For a few years, Little York was terrorized by a group of criminals known as the Decker family and led by Dick Fisher, who vandalized the stores of Jewish shopkeepers.

[8] Indications of the town's prosperity include the arrival of a post office in 1855,[9] and the completion of a good wagon road to Dutch Flat.

[13] The town had chapters of social organizations, including the Sons of Temperance, and the Independent Order of Good Templars and a company of the Union Guard.

The line was soon extended to Lowell Hill to the north and Dutch Flat to the east, a total of about 15 miles.

[16] In 1880, an historian wrote that in "its prime the town contained two hotels, three stores, two saloons, 40 houses and a population of about 200."

"[22] The channel was hundreds of feet wide and the gold lay buried in hard cemented gravel which had a blue sheen.

"[27] The richest area around Little York, Scott's Ravine which ran between Steephollow Creek and the Bear River, regularly yielded up to $20 per day to the hand.

Running 18 miles, the Little York or Gardner (sometimes Gardiner) ditch brought water from the Bear River.

[31] At the same time, some miners were drift mining, tunneling into hillsides and using explosives to break up the cemented gravel.

Apart from its hub at Little York, principal towns included Lowell Hill, Red Dog and You Bet.

[46] Louis Voss, Charles Kitt and the Towle Brothers were the principal lumbermen, each of them building a railroad to help get the lumber to market.

[47] As for horticulture, "[i]n the western portion of Little York Township, fruit crops are a certainty every year and the excellence of the production insures the highest prices in the market.

Access is from Dutch Flat, since the Lowell Hill Road bridge across Steephollow Creek washed out in a storm in 1983.