Rocklin was established in 1863-1864 as a station for the Central Pacific Railroad.  Its name derives from the abundance of granite in the area.  The “lin” is generally considered to be a Celtic term meaning “valley or dale.”  Over the years, more than sixty separate granite operations flourished in Rocklin, with the years from 1890 to 1905 considered the high-water mark.

Among the buildings and constructions that utilized Rocklin granite products are the State Capitol Building in Sacramento; the Mint in San Francisco; the foundation of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco; City Hall in San Francisco; the Placer County Courthouse; the Reno Courthouse; the San Francisco Post Office; curbing for San Francisco following the earthquake and fire of 1906; buildings in Tonopah, Nevada, Oakland, San Jose, and Fresno; the Coaling and Naval Station at Pearl Harbor; the Campanile at the University of California, Berkeley; the Oakland Auditorium; stone bridges at Sequoia National Park;  the Monterey breakwater; summer homes at Lake Tahoe; granite benches for the Rayburn Congressional Office Building in Washington, D.C.; the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco -- and many, many more, including the Rocklin City Hall itself, which is the refurbished company store of the California Granite Company.  The building was constructed in 1910 and became the City Hall in 1940.

Today, Rocklin is one of the fastest growing communities in California and the home of Sierra Community College.   Sierra College is a fully accredited, two-year community college located in north central California.  The college serves Placer, Nevada and portions of El Dorado and Sacramento counties. The college district encompasses more than 3200 square miles of terrain ranging from the flatlands of California’s Central Valley to the majestic mountains of the Sierra Nevada.  The 300-acre main campus is located on Interstate 80, the main Trans-Sierra roadway, in Rocklin.  Sierra College is just twenty-five miles northeast of Sacramento, California’s State Capitol.  Other facilities include a 105-acre Nevada County Campus in Grass Valley (a major mining center during the California Gold Rush), a campus center in North Tahoe/Truckee (just a dozen miles from Lake Tahoe), training facilities in nearby Loomis and a satellite center in Roseville (the primary population center within the district).