The holiday of the Yugskaya icon of the Mother of God is celebrated as the day of the founding of the Yugskaya Dorofeeva desert. According to legend, the elder schemamonk Dorofey, who lived in the Pskovo-Pechersky Monastery at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, was returning in 1615 with the icon of the Odigitria to his native village of Nizhne-Nikulskoye, located near the Mologa River. At the confluence of the rivers Belaya Yuga and Chernaya Yuga, he received a sign from the icon, commanding him to establish a monastery there. Dorofey built a cell and a chapel at this site, where local residents soon began to come to venerate the miraculous image. After his death, with the blessing of Patriarch Filaret, a monastery was erected at the site of the desert.

Documents describing this period of history have not survived. It is only known that the first wooden church in honor of the icon of the Mother of God Odigitria and an altar in the name of the holy great martyr Paraskeva Friday were built with the funds and efforts of local residents. The desert was named Yugskaya Dorofeeva.

In the early 18th century, the wooden church was replaced by two stone ones, and stone buildings for the brotherhood's cells were also constructed. In 1793, the construction of a cathedral in honor of the Life-Giving Trinity began, which was a four-pillar two-light building with five octagonal drums, resembling the cathedral of the Kazan Monastery in Yaroslavl. The relics of the founder of the monastery, the Venerable Dorofey of Yuga, were laid to rest here.

In the 19th century, the monastery's economy significantly expanded. From 1817 to 1828, a single-altar and single-domed warm church of the Mother of God of the Silent was built with the funds of landowner Veselitskaya, serving as the temple of the monastery's almshouse. Its design was replicated by the Church of Nicholas the Wonderworker, built from 1836 to 1842. They replaced the northeastern and southeastern towers of the monastery's enclosure. In 1846, a stone five-domed church in honor of the Assumption of the Most Holy Theotokos was consecrated, which became the warm temple of the monastery. In 1839 and 1857, a four-tiered bell tower was constructed. By the mid-19th century, these buildings, along with the stone enclosure with towers, formed a unified architectural ensemble in the style of classicism. Outside the monastery, there were three stone inns for pilgrims, a bathhouse, granaries, a horse yard, a forge, a dam for water retention, and a monastery garden. In the early 20th century, the Yugskaya Dorofeeva desert was one of the richest and most well-maintained monasteries in the diocese, serving as an important center of asceticism in Russia.

After the October Revolution, the monastery was closed, and its valuables were confiscated. In 1920, a children's commune was placed here, and in the 1930s, the monastery was repurposed for housing for Volgostroy. Most of the buildings outside the monastery and the adjacent land plots passed into the ownership of the Yug agricultural enterprise. The monastery was destroyed during the flooding of the Rybinsk Reservoir in April 1941.