History
The family founded what would become Basin City during Gold Rush, when a Roark ancestor brought with him a large number of foreign prostitutes to the gold mining camp. The prostitutes were immediately popular, turning a small camp into a thriving city. Over the years, the prostitutes themselves eventually split from the family and formed their own district reserved specifically for prostitution. This red light district would later be known as Old Town.
In the time period of the comics, the Roark dynasty is currently thriving, with family members in the United States Senate, an Attorney General and a Cardinal.
Read more about this topic: Roark Family
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)