She told the Otago Daily Times this week several of the sections were given to her grandfather - storekeeper Robert McDougall - by Chinese miners unable to pay their bills. However, the legal work required to transfer ownership to her grandfather was never done.
The Public Trust is attempting to trace descendants of the section owners in an effort to resolve the long-standing ownership issue.
Her grandfather arrived in Cardrona in 1878 with his father, also Robert McDougall, who was a goldfields merchant.
They set up a store next to the Cardrona Hotel and her grandfather, aged 14, was left to run it while the rest of the family went to Wanaka.
Mr McDougall continued to operate the store until he died in 1946.
"We think that's how the sections were handed over. They were just around the house and down below the hotel where there are huge piles of wood at the moment."
"Our understanding is that the sections were given to our grandfather to pay for groceries and things ... but they didn't do anything to make it legal."
Although it was a story handed down verbally through the family, Miss Little believed there "must have been truth in it" but there was no way of proving it.
Mr McDougall was the postmaster at Cardrona and spoke Cantonese. Miss Little said he was much respected by the miners, who referred to him as their older brother.
When he married, he was given a silk embroidery by the Chinese miners inscribed with the words: "The husband sings and the wife follows." It also has some miners' names on it.
Miss Little has a newspaper clipping that records Mr McDougall writing off the debt of a miner who died leaving his family in difficult circumstances, and she recalls him as a "kind and generous man".
