In 1908, G. Yoell Parkhurst compiled a Lassen County booklet as part of Sunset Magazine’s Homesteader’s Bureau operation. Parkhurst made the following observation about Milford:
“Milford is quaint little village a few miles from the west shore of Honey Lake, and is the post office for some fine orchard and farm lands. The best way to show what may be done here is to tell about James Doyle, one of Lassen County’s oldest and prosperous citizens. He came to California in the early sixties [1860s] by way of the plain route. Arriving in Lassen County in the vicinity of Milford, he saw the possibilities in the land around him, so went no farther, taking up a section of land plowing the soil. Altogether he accumulated a mile and a quarter square of land between Honey Lake and the mountains, all of it being overgrown with sagebrush. This was nearly sixty years ago and today he is one of the wealthiest men in the County, made so by the power of his own energy exerted upon fertile land.