Looking at Roseville’s shopper-packed malls, multipurpose parks, arts venues and fresh housing tracts, it’s hard to believe that this active community grew out of a remote railroad hub.
Before gold brought the world’s attention to the low hills of the Sierra Nevada, this territory was prime ranching land, with immense flocks of sheep grazing its broad basin. By the time the California Central Railroad laid tracks across the valley floor intending to link Folsom to Marysville in 1858, it was a village of farmers and ranchers.
When the east-west trail of tracks for the Central Pacific Railroad crossed that line in 1864, the nexus was called Junction. Eventually, the whole area took on that name.
Prospecting was going on in what is known today as Miners Ravine, but agriculture was the economic base for the earliest landowners. According to “The History of Placer and Nevada Counties,” by W.B. Lardner and M.J. Brock, approximately 42,000 acres of grazing land was held by Stephen Boutwell, William Dunlap and James Kaseberg, with 30,000 sheep sheared each day during peak periods.
Junction changed from an agrarian district to an industrial town at the whim of railroad officials.
Prior to 1906, the Central Pacific’s maintenance yard and roundhouse were situated up the line in Rocklin. When the railroad decided to expand its operations, it relocated the
facilities to Junction.
By then, the tracks were part of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s western leg of the nation’s transcontinental rail line. Busy with freight shipments and passenger service, the rail yard brought new forms of commerce and construction to Junction.
Most of the employees working in Rocklin followed their jobs westward. Many even hoisted their homes up and used horse-drawn sleds to haul them to empty lots in Roseville. Within two years, Roseville’s population spurted from 400 to 2,000 citizens.
Railroad-related businesses also helped the number of residents swell. In 1909, the Pacific Fruit Express Company — a maker of ice and manufacturer of refrigerated rail cars — moved its repair shops from Sacramento to Roseville, bringing along 100 employees. By 1912, the newly incorporated City of Roseville had 500 new residences to house its growing work force.
Over the decades, development oozed out from the railroad tracks to new clusters of commerce and tracts of production housing. Growth remained slow-paced until a new way of living arrived in the form of Interstate 80.
When I-80 was completed in the 1950s, it brought commuting to the region. Combined with the post-World War II population shifting away from rural burgs to big cities, Roseville was reborn as a bedroom community.
Parcels within the city limits filled in with stores, apartment complexes and office buildings. The surrounding countryside began to transform from cattle ranches and orchards to subdivisions of contemporary homes and condominium units.
Today, the elder environs of Roseville are being revitalized to bridge the older and younger generations of buildings and businesses. Wedged between vintage neighborhoods and the historic precinct, Royer Park is a greenbelt that cinches together the residential and commercial zones. With its Veterans Hall, Children’s Arts Center, colorful playgrounds and shaded picnic areas, it complements the surrounding homes, shops, theaters, museums and galleries.
Once a dusty railroad crossing, Old Roseville now sits at the junction of the past and future.
