The earlier locality was situated near a water source at the junction of several roads and operated essentially as a hotel, store and post-office, with adjoining paddocks on freehold land.

The site of the original township is 10 km (6 mi) north-east of its current location, off the Rankins Springs Road near a narrow gap in the Conapaira Range.

[3]  The “Rankin’s Springs” location probably got its name as a place where water could be reliably found on a stock-route across the dry country between the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers.

[5][6]  This was a period of increased population and consolidation of Riverina townships as the New South Wales government sought to encourage closer settlement in the inland regions.

By the late 1860s the large pastoral runs held by leasehold were beginning to be broken up under legislation that allowed “free selection before survey” of crown land.

Soon after leaving Rankins Springs the driver “pulled up to open the gate at the Four Mile” when “a masked man appeared with a rifle, stuck him up, and asked him for the mail bags, pointing the gun at him at the same time”.

After gathering material and circumstantial evidence the constables arrested John King, a resident of Rankin's Springs and brother-in-law of the publican and postmaster, James Graham.

[9] John Hannan took over the license of the newly built Rankins Springs Hotel in 1893 and continued in that role until 1923, occupying the property under a series of tenancy and leasing arrangements.

[20] In July 1926 the growing settlement of Rankins Springs, developing alongside the recently-completed railway terminus, was described in the following terms: A series of meetings of the Hotel Licensing Board were held in 1926 and early 1927 at West Wyalong to determine the status of the license of the Rankins Springs Hotel at the original location (north-east of the developing village at the railway terminus).

[23]  Its replacement, a two-storey brick structure also called the Rankins Springs Hotel, had taken its place by early 1930 “erected at a cost of many thousands of pounds”.

The flames, fanned by a strong breeze, quickly spread to the top-storey of the main building with the volunteer fire fighters hampered by a “lack of fire-fighting appliances and water”.

[27] In 1951 a film titled Rankins Springs is West was released by the Shell Company of Australia to promote “modern kerosene burning appliances for country folk”.

[33] The area surrounding Rankins Springs is within the Lachlan Plains subregion of the extensive Cobar Peneplain Bioregion (comprising 9.2 percent of New South Wales).

Threatened native bird species that can be found in the district include malleefowl, Gilbert's whistler, chestnut quail-thrush, shy heathwren and the painted honeyeater.

[37] Pulletop Nature Reserve is 22 kilometres south-west of Rankins Springs, consisting of 145 hectares of remnant mallee woodland surrounded by agricultural land.

Pulletop was the location of intensive scientific research that began in 1951 into the behaviour and ecology of the malleefowl by Harry Frith, who was based at Griffith and worked for the CSIRO.

Frith wrote nine scientific papers on the species as well as an important popular book, The Mallee-Fowl: The Bird That Builds an Incubator (1962), which included guidelines for malleefowl conservation.

The plant, which grows in mallee or shrub associations in sandy soils, is endemic to the Rankins Springs district extending to the region around Griffith.