The Roundup Record Archive 

The first publication of the Roundup Record on April 3, 1908, coincided with the creation of the town of Roundup, Montana, inspired in large part by the arrival of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway in 1908. The newspaper's first editor, Alfred W. Eiselein Sr., started the six-column, eight-page weekly at age 23 with $1,000, money he earned editing a newspaper in Danube, Minnesota, while still in his teens. As Roundup's most significant "booster," Eiselein purchased the first lot in town and acquired his printing plant in Minneapolis, which by 1917 he moved into a new building which still stands on Roundup's Main Street. Eiselein also established the first Republican Central Committee in Musselshell County.

The inaugural issue of the Roundup Record lauded the town's natural amenities:  good soil along the bottom lands of the Musselshell River, abundant deposits of coal, and opportunities for homesteaders. The confluence of the Republic Coal Company, established in 1906, and the arrival of the Milwaukee Railroad two years later created a boom in real estate in Roundup, trumpeted in the Record column, "The Local Roundup," which reported the construction of 60 new buildings.

The Eiselein family and the Roundup Record weathered drought and economic failure which began in the 1920s and continued through the 1930s. The local coal mining industry, however, continued to grow with as many as 1,200 miners providing fuel to the Milwaukee Road prior to the introduction of diesel locomotives. The Eiselein family still published the newspaper into the 1970s under the name of Roundup Record-Tribune .