You don’t go to Roundup,
Montana, without a pretty good reason in mind.
I am not suggesting Roundup is a bad place. Far from it.
Roundup is a nice place. The
surrounding landscape is scenic. But
Roundup is remote—even by the standards of Montanans—which is saying something.
The highway through town
isn’t going anyplace in particular.
Roundup isn’t one of those little stops in-between two big towns. The town hangs like a lone bead on a
secondary highway in the middle of quiet.
Roundup just is. The town got its
name because early ranchers found the narrow valley near the Musselshell River
a convenient place to roundup there cattle.
Roundup is the county seat
for Musselshell County.
The nearby countryside is
busy with ancient rim rock formations and broken land. Scattered pine, cattle, and game animals are
found throughout. Thick green grass
thrives in the winding river and creek bottoms
and climbs up into the nearby timber.
The Musselshell River swashbuckles right in next to Roundup and then
drifts off again. The town feels like
the Old West for no reason that comes to mind immediately.
Both Roundup and
Musselshell County at large have seen constant cycles of boom and bust. Irrigation projects helped convey water to
the dry lands. The Homestead Act of 1920
beckoned people to the remote lands. The
dustbowl era drought that soon followed saw them leave again. Coal mines have opened and closed. The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad
came, bringing people and jobs, but left in the 1970s.
Today, the population of
Musselshell County is something near 5,000.
That is down substantially from a population of about 9,000 shortly
after Montana Governor Edwin Norris officially created the county in 1911.
By the way, I do have a
reason for being in Roundup on this soon-to-be sunny day. I have a solar PV instructing gig here. A local area electrical shop is installing an
8,000 watt ground-mount system today and I am involved with that.
--Mitchell
Hegman
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