[1] Rockport started as a small company town serving the timber industry[3] on the Pacific Ocean coast among redwood forests in Northern California.

An unusual aspect of the site was a 270-foot (80 m) wire suspension bridge, built in 1877 to connect the mainland to a small island in the ocean.

Between 1924 and 1926, the Finkbine-Guild Lumber Company from Jackson, Mississippi modernized the town and built a new electric sawmill[5] and a logging railroad.

[3] After a decade of bankruptcy, the mill reopened in 1938 as the Rockport Redwood Company (a subsidiary of an association of Kansas and Oklahoma lumber retailers headed by Ralph Rounds.)

Harry Merlo was vice president and general manager of the firm of Rounds and Kirkpatrick at the time of purchase.

Federal Trade Commission action initiated in 1972 required Georgia-Pacific to transfer California Assets to a newly formed Louisiana-Pacific Corporation with Harry Merlo as its president.

The station was deemed surplus by the department by the late 1970s, thanks in part to budget cuts spurred on from passage of Proposition 13, and abandoned.