In June 1864, the Chico and Humboldt Wagon Road Company began constructing a road to connect Chico with the Idaho mines, and a toll station for that road stood nearby to the left. On the rim of Little Chico Creek Canyon, a Georgian named Nick Spires is said to have built the first accommodation there for travelers and their livestock. The name longest associated with the popular inn is Paul Lucas, who bought the land from Spires, and his son John built a fine two-story hotel. A slaughter house supplied the inn with beef raised on the Lucas Ranch on Little Chico Creek, while orchards and gardens provided fruit and vegetables and a good spring provided plenty of water. After 1917, the hide house next to the slaughter house off to the right was used as a school for Chico Canyon children. Folklore holds that Nick Spires' black slave, who came with him from Georgia, remained at the 14 Mile House after emancipation and is buried at the site of the old gardens. Soon after the turn of the 20th century, the toll house was moved four miles north, nearer today's Forest Ranch, and the last remaining 14 Mile House building, the old barn, disappeared in the 1960s.