During the period 1950 through 1969, 2344 persons (755 men and 1589 women) in Rochester, Minn, met diagnostic and residency criteria for cholelithiasis. The age-adjusted average annual incidence rates per 100,000 population were 217 for men and 370 for women (adjusted rates were 255 and 276, respectively). Incidence rates increased with age in both sexes, but more rapidly so for men, so that by 70 years of age the rate for men was higher than that for women. For the decades covered in this study, no secular trend in incidence was detected for the two sexes combined or separately.