College City began when a school was built with the money from the sale of property left by the will of Andrew Pierce, who died around April 1871. Two years later in 1873, the College City post office was established. In January 1875 a newspaper article promoted College City and stated that the town had "two general stores, one hotel, one livery stable, one saddler shop, one shoe shop, two blacksmith and wagon shops, one butcher shop, one bakery, numerous boarding houses, drug store and milliner shop and... Chinese wash houses."
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1889Sheet 1 of 1
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Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
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Weddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
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Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
