The ancestors of the Chumash people lived on Santa Rosa for many thousands of years, establishing numerous village sites along the coast and in the interior.

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's crew visited the island after his death, and found three Chumash villages, containing a total of 40-50 people.

[5]: 55–56 George Nidever hunted sea otters for their pelts in the late 1830s and 1840s, under a license granted by the Mexican government to William Dana.

Their husbands, John Coffin Jones (1796–1861) and Alpheus Basil Thompson (1795–1869), entered into a partnership to manage the island.

In 1852, the Channel Islands were ceded to the United States by Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican–American War.

[5]: 67–90 The United States Army leased 46 acres for a radar post during WW II, and erected 16 buildings for 75 men, between Jan. and Aug. 1943.

[8] Threatened lawsuits in 1996 resulted in a settlement agreement, which included the end of all hunting and ranching operations, such that only one steer remained by 1998.

[5]: 96–97 In 2006 U.S. Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) introduced a provision into the annual defense policy bill that would allow disabled veterans to continue hunting elk on the island past 2011, without the consent of Vail & Vickers or the National Park Service.

This legislation was repealed by the next Congress as part of the FY 2007 Omnibus appropriations bill,[9] also signed into law by President George W. Bush.

A year-round charter flight service is available from Camarillo Airport for hikers and campers to Santa Rosa Island.

[12] Its surrounding waters serve as an invaluable nursery for the sea life that feeds larger marine mammals and seabirds.

Great white sharks, including some adults over 15 feet in length, are fairly common in the northern Channel Islands (especially San Miguel and Santa Rosa) and feed on the abundant marine mammals.

They were carefully preserved, and were finally analyzed in 1987, when radiocarbon dating methods were improved, by scientists Don Morris and John Johnson.

[18] Back 13,000 years ago, the site of the discovery would have been an interior island location, several miles from where the coast then existed.