Rocklin’s post office opened in 1868, and 1 of its places is on the National Register
More historic than 33% of U.S. towns · #309 of 847 in California. What drives it
1 place in town is on the National Register, among them a historic district with 3 buildings. Most of Rocklin was built recently: 1% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 1998. Below: maps from 1890 on and the census since 1870.
Founding year: the first Rocklin post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Rocklin’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Rocklin is more historic than 33% of U.S. towns, #309 of 847 in California. Its National Register listings hold the grade up; its share of homes from before 1940 pulls it down.
C
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Rocklin’s overall grade.
Few California towns list much on the Register (a typical California town has 0.0 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Rocklin’s 0.4 sits above most of its state (69% of California towns have fewer) while its 3 historic buildings outnumber those of 65% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from D to B−. The pre-1940 share (±0.5 points) is firm at this size. The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Rocklin’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Lost a third of its people between 1890 and 1920, then grew more than tenfold.
16 censuses, 1870–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Rocklin’s Wikipedia page.
Every building
Rocklin, building by building, 1890–1907
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.
1890Sheet 1 of 1
Edition
Sheets
BrickWoodStone
Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Before the California Gold Rush, the Nisenan Maidu occupied both permanent villages and temporary summer shelters along the rivers and streams that miners sifted, sluiced, dredged, and dammed to remove the gold. Explorer Jedediah Smith and a large party of American fur trappers crossed the Sacramento Valley in April 1827. The group saw many Maidu villages along the river banks. Deprived of traditional foodstuffs, homesites, and hunting grounds by the emigrants, the Nisenan were among the earliest California Indian tribes to disappear.
Passages that mention Rocklin, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Placer county, California1882 · page 301Read the page →
Read the text
Edited by S. J. Pullen, appeared May 22, 1880, at Roseville, being the successor of the Mountain Echo, from the neighboring town of Rocklin. THE ADVANCE. Volume 1, Number 1, of The Advance, is dated Auburn, May 2, 1879, H. W. Hulbert, publisher and proprietor. This was a well-printed and ably edited paper of four pages, of six columns to the page, and
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Placer county, California1882 · page 246Read the page →
Read the text
ranch on Wolf Creek, in Nevada County; and one of his sons, Mr. James Nickerson, is the enterprising manager of the California Raisin Company's vineyard in Clover Valley, near the village of Rocklin. In the early history of the cultivation of the grape in California, vineyards were very generally located on the deep and rich soil of the valleys, or on the extended adobe land of the plains, but subsequent ex-
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Rocklin, 1868 to 2020
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
The Rocklin post office opened in 1868, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Rocklin rank for history?
Rocklin is more historic than 33% of U.S. towns, #309 of 847 in California. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
What is on the National Register in Rocklin?
One place: the California Granite Company (listed 2012).
How old are the homes in Rocklin?
1% of Rocklin’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate), against a typical 3.4% for a California town; the median home was built in 1998.
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).
From Wikimedia Commons (2), the National Register of Historic Places (1), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System, Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress) and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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