Roseville is located in Placier County, north of Sacramento, the state capital of California, 164 kilometers northeast of San Francisco and 652 kilometers north of Los Angeles. The total area within the municipal borders is 79 km², the average height above sea level is 50 meters. The city is located on the eastern border of the Sacramento Valley (part of the California Valley), at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountain system.

In the town, the Union Pacific Railroad sorting station and the Amtrak passenger station are located. The 80th interstate highway also passes through the city. Buses connect Roseville to Sacramento and other cities in Placier County.

The proximity of the Sierra Nevada Mountains affects the climate of Roseville, slightly different from the climate of neighboring Sacramento. The warmest month in the town is July, the coldest December, the most rainfall in January. The highest temperature, 46 degrees Celsius, as well as the lowest, 9 degrees below zero, was recorded in 1972 (respectively, in July–August and December

Before the arrival of Europeans, the region where Roseville is located was inhabited by the Maydu Indian tribes. One of Maidu’s cultural centers was located on the shores of the River River, east of the modern center of Roseville. In 1964, the remains of yet another settlement of Maidu, located on the banks of the Dry Creek River, were discovered within the city limits.

In the 1850s, after the gold rush along the streams and small rivers of this region, unsuccessful gold miners settled in agriculture. The rich soils along Dry Creek were one of the first to be cultivated. By the seventies, cattle breeding had already developed in the region (including cattle and pig breeding) and the first apple plantations and vineyards appeared. By the mid-1860s, the Central Pacific Railroad and the Central California Railroad passed through this area, the station at the intersection of which became the core of the future Roseville. Among the various versions explaining the origin of the name Roseville, the city site calls the most reliable one according to which the name of the village was given by numerous bushes of wild roses growing in the surrounding ravines. Roseville was first mentioned in newspapers during the presidential election of 1864, in which its residents supported Lincoln.

The depression of 1893 gave way to a short-term gold rush in the Roseville area after the discovery of gold deposits, but the ore was poor or quickly depleted, and the boom ended by 1897. At the same time, the development of citrus plantations in the town began.

In 1906, the sorting station of the South Pacific Railway was moved to Roseville, which turned it into a key transportation hub for the US Pacific coast. This caused an influx of new residents and building buzz. In 1906, the Roswell Chamber of Commerce was founded. In just two years, the Roseville population has grown five-fold, from 400 to 2,000. In 1909, the first elections to the city government, the Board of Trustees, took place, and Roseville officially received city status.

In the early 1950s, the Roseville depot was expanded and modernized, and the city became the largest US rail terminal west of Chicago. The number of locomotives has grown in ten years from seven to four hundred. In 1956, the 80th interstate highway passed through the city, after which a gradual movement of the bulk of the city’s population to its eastern part began.

In 2000, the population of Roseville was about 80 thousand people [8]. According to the US Census Bureau, by mid-2009, the city’s population had grown to more than 115.5 thousand people, which is an increase of 44.7 percent over nine years. Rapid population growth began in the 80s of the twentieth century. So, if from 1910 to 1980 the population of Roseville grew from 2,600 to 24,300 people, then from 1980 to 1990 the increase was more than 20 thousand people, and in the next decade 35 thousand people.

In 2000, 86% of the population were white (including Hispanics); over the next nine years, the share of whites in the city’s population fell to 81.3%. The percentage of immigrants from the city’s neighbors grew during this time from 9 to almost 12 percent, while the share of Asian immigrants is growing most rapidly, accounting for 4.3% in 2000 and 8% in 2009.

The average age of the Roseville population for 2009 is 36 and a half years, which corresponds to the average age for the United States; also roughly corresponds to the average American percentage of residents under the age of 18 and over 65 years of age. The population of the city is evenly distributed by gender.

Roseville is a city with a high standard of living. The average annual per capita income in the town in 2009 was about 33.7 thousand dollars, per family about 88.5 thousand. Both indicators are significantly higher than the US average. Income of 6.6% of the population was below the poverty level, while on average in the United States 13.5% of the population received income below the poverty level. The unemployment rate in the town rose from 3.6% in 2000 to 10.6% in 2009, all the while remaining below the average unemployment rate in California, and only since 2007 has exceeded the average US unemployment rate.

The city has seven high schools and local branches of Hild College and Sierra College, a California network of colleges.

Residents of the city use the services of three departments of the city library. In the town, the city theater, the art gallery of the Roseville Arts! Society and a number of museums, including the Maidu Culture Museum, the Telephone Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Local Lore and the Utility Exploration Center, the exposition of which is dedicated to the rational use of natural resources.