Roundup, Montana: Cowboys and Coal

Roundup takes its name from the cattle roundups that rolled across the Musselshell River country every fall, gathering the herds that had ranged the open plains all summer. A post office opened here in eighteen eighty-three on the McMillan Ranch, and for two decades Roundup was pure range country. Then the brutal winter of eighteen eighty-six and eighteen eighty-seven killed up to half the cattle on the northern Plains and forced most large open-range operations to fold.

Roundup reinvented itself when the railroad arrived in nineteen oh seven and coal mining took off. The town that had been built around cowboys suddenly filled with miners, and the Musselshell County seat, established in nineteen eleven, had to accommodate both populations. The cowboys and the miners were not always easy neighbors, but Roundup made room for both identities, and its rodeo grounds still draw competitors from across central Montana.