He assisted Benjamin Apthorp Gould in the creation of the Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba in Argentina between 1870 and 1873.
He worked on the Wheeler Survey which mapped parts of the western United States from 1878 to 1879 and as Chief of the Guatemala Boundary Commission from 1883 to 1898 which defined the disputed Guatemala–Mexico border.
He served as chairman of The Junto literary society[4] and worked with Henry Sturgis Drinker to survey and map the Friedensville Zinc Mine[5] in Center Valley, Pennsylvania.
[1] Rock and three others, including John M. Thome and William Morris Davis, assisted Benjamin Apthorp Gould in the creation of the Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba in Argentina between 1870 and 1873.
[1] He was a member of the Anthropological Society of Washington and in 1879 made presentations titled "Indian pictographs in New Mexico" and "On the Effacing Power of Tropical Forest-growth in Trinidad Island".