Black Rock, Oregon

Black Rock is an unincorporated community and former logging camp in Polk County, Oregon, United States. It is located about three miles west of Falls City, in the Central Oregon Coast Range on the Little Luckiamute River.

Louis Gerlinger came to Polk County in 1903 and bought 7,000 acres of timberland that included the area of Black Rock. In 1905, Gerlinger's son George T. Gerlinger bought an existing sawmill in nearby Dallas as well as the right-of-way to build a logging railroad into the Black Rock area. He had previously built a logging railroad from Vancouver to Yacolt in Washington.

Black Rock, founded in 1905, became the western terminus of the Salem, Falls City and Western Railway (later the Southern Pacific Railroad's Falls City branchline), which hauled timber into Dallas. The locale was probably named for an exposed ledge of black shale. Black Rock post office was established in 1906, with Louis Gerlinger as the first postmaster. Some people who worked in the Black Rock area lived there, while others came from Falls City or Dallas. As the town grew, it eventually had three stores, a drug store, a barber shop, a restaurant, two saloons, a one-room schoolhouse, bunkhouses and cook houses for single men, living quarters for families, and a train depot. The town of Black Rock was platted in 1910 by Charles K. Spaulding, with 22 blocks and lettered and numbered streets. High population estimates vary from 600 to 1500.

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