Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
9 places in town are on the National Register, among them a historic district with 48 buildings. Below: 6 old photos and papers, maps from 1907 on, and the census since 1910.
The Joliet post office opened in 1893, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.
From Wikipedia’s history of Joliet.
The construction of the Rocky Fork & Cooke City Railway in 1892 made Joliet a shipping point. The Joliet Post Office was established on June 10, 1893, with Maud Smith as its first postmaster. The town was named for Joliet, Illinois.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
BuiltJoliet Bridge is builtBuiltBaker and Lovering Store is built
In the archiveLovering and Smith Store Joliet Montana about 1911
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey
In the archive3-4 VIEW OF BRIDGE, LOOKING NORTH - Rock Creek Bridge, Spanning Rock Creek at County Road…2 decades in the archive, from the 1910s to the 1960s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Joliet.
1956Fromberg sheet · 1:24,000U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Joliet.
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.
1907Sheet 2 of 2Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Joliet’s page.
Retake this view · +15Between 359 and 595 people in every census since 1910.
12 censuses, 1910–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Joliet’s Wikipedia page.
Writers, athletes, leaders and more, ranked by how widely they’re known.
Joliet’s post office has been open since 1893.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
The Joliet post office opened in 1893, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
9 listings: 7 buildings, among them the Baker and Lovering Store (listed 1986, the first), 1 historic district, the Joliet Residential Historic District, with 48 contributing buildings, and 1 structure. 55 historic buildings in all.
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
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 Wikimedia Commons (11), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (9), 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 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.
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