The South Yuba Canal Office on Main Street looks modest from the outside, but it was the nerve centre of the most extensive water-delivery system in Gold Rush California. The canal network it managed — hundreds of miles of flumes, ditches, and tunnels — supplied water to the hydraulic mining operations that literally rearranged the landscape of the Sierra foothills.
Water was money in the mining districts, and the office that controlled its distribution wielded enormous power. The building itself, constructed in the 1850s, is one of the oldest surviving commercial structures in Nevada City. It now serves as an information point and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A quick stop here, combined with a walk along Main Street, gives a good sense of the commercial infrastructure that grew up around the Gold Rush.