e quarry that became a town: Rocklin, California
From 1864 through 2005 the Rocklin California 
quarries extracted and crafted an estimated 2.4 million tons of granite. This is the story of how that came to be. Clearly many details had to be omitted, but I have tried to include the most important parts of the early Rocklin story.
It all started with the Rocklin Pluton - granite formed as the molten lava of volcanic action pushed up and formed igneous rock. Once it became solid through crystalization, it still lay underground. As the Sierras were rising and forming a few million years ago, the slopes of the Rocklin area rose too, and then the soil covering the Rocklin Pluton eroded away and the granite became exposed. The Rocklin Pluton stretches from Roseville to Newcastle and from Folsom to Lincoln.
The granite in the Rocklin Pluton is 128 million years old, but was exposed only during the last 2-4 million years. Since it is "young" granite, not largely weathered, it has retained a lot of its great qualities of hardness, glitter, brilliance and color.
The 1848 Gold Rush brought many to the area, but since it was solid granite rock throughout the area, there wasn't much to mine except in the streams. When that ran out, many stayed to work on the railroad and to start and work in quarries. The first Rocklin quarries started about 1855.
Joe Parker Whitney was a prospector who passed through the area on his way to the gold fields. He fell in love with the green hills and valleys of the Rocklin area and wrote back east to his father, George Whitney. The elder Whitney came out in 1855 and bought most of the land that makes up modern day Rocklin, about 30,000 acres, calling it Spring Valley Ranch, on which he opened a large quarry.
At one time or another, quarries operated at more than 60 locations in Rocklin, providing much of the stone to build California. The railroad built a roundhouse in Rocklin which facilitated exporting the granite to other places in California. The quarries attracted many immigrant stone workers and their families, with many coming from Finland during the 1880s. By 1900 over half of the population of Rocklin was of Finnish descent.
All did not always go smoothly, however, and in 1908 the roundhouse was moved to Roseville, leaving Rocklin behind. After that, the quarries and the community declined.
A devastating fire destroyed the town in 1914. 
The only meeting hall left standing was the Finnish Temperance Hall, and for years the school, meetings, celebrations and plays were all held in that hall. That building still stands and is still available for functions.
The construction needs of the growing state kept some of the quarries open, but in 1915 concrete began to replace granite in construction, and a strike that year put many of the remaining quarries out of business, leaving the quarry now known as Big Gun 
Mining Company one of the only stone cutting operations left, and the oldest operating quarry.
Rocklin granite built the California State Capitol building, many San Francisco government buildings, museums, and the iconic Transamerica building. Also the Auburn courthouse and the old Rocklin City Hall, among many other buildings. Even today, many area monument signs and kitchen counters come from Rocklin. Granite 
was even used as fenceposts.
From a rough and tumble quarry town with 22 saloons at the height of its stone cutting years, Rocklin has grown into a beautiful tree-filled community of lovely homes in rolling hills. It is a wonderful place to live and work, and many of its current inhabitants have no idea of its history: the quarry that became a town.
Photos 2 and 5 above are used with permission of Peggy B. and Pat Perazzo, Stone Quarries and Beyond; http://quarriesandbeyond.org/
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