- Erwin G. Gudde, 1975

"This little town is situated in a small basin on Oregon creek and was once called "Oregon Hill." It is thirty-five miles from Marysville on the Foster Bar Turnpike. This place was first worked in 1850, but did not become well developed until the construction of the Nine Horse Ditch. The company that constructed this ditch was composed of nine members, and in order to let it be known that it was no "one horse" affair, they named it the "Nine Horse Ditch." A hotel was kept by T.C. Prewett; a store owned by Murphy & Jones was kept by J. Lawrence. The first school was opened in 1861, taught by Miss Henley. In 1868, a school house was erected at a cost of $2000, and the Greenville district was formed. The town has now about eighty inhabitants."

- Thompson & West, History of Yuba County, 1879