Founded in 1879 and named Rock Creek. When a post office was established in the home of an early homesteader, Robert Patterson, he suggested this Spanish name based on the flat open character of the valley.

A score of frame buildings once straggled along the highway and railroad track. Dominating the village were several wheat warehouses and a large grain elevator. In late summer trucks piled high with sacks of grain rolled into town, and the farmer, his annual crop safely harvested, began to study the quotations of the grain market and to figure his profits or, as frequently happened in recent years, his losses.