Beaten but not despairing, they returned to Massachusetts, where Leupold had landed seven years earlier.
Markus Frederick Leupold was born in Ravensburg, Wuerttenburg, Germany, his mothers only child.
He apprenticed in a machine shop, but imagined opportunity in America.
The 16-year-old lad endured his voyage sea-sick in steerage.
Despite his halting English, Frederick soon found work at C.L.
Berger & Sons, a maker of survey instruments.
His skills and natural engineering talent so impressed the company that after his Alaska trip he was re-hired.
Young Leupold earned $12 a week for six 10-hour days.
In 1899, he married Rose Voelpel, his friend Adams sister.
Eight years later they followed Adam west.
Then 32, Frederick was keen to find a growing community where he could set up his own shop.
He and Rose settled in Portland.
Soon Adam moved from New Mexico to join him in an enterprise designing, building and repairing survey instruments.
In 1900, Fredericks first son, Marcus, was born.
Two more children would follow.
Frederick worked long hours to buy a costly measuring machine.
Frederick got an assist from John Cyprian Jack Stevens.
At that time, water level recorders had to be checked at least weekly.
Stevens designed a recorder that could be left unattended for months.
There it produced bomb fuses as well as sextants and peloruses.
One evening, Marcus bounded from the dinner table.
I have an idea!
It would lead Leupold & Stevens Instruments on another path.
Tragically, his father would not travel it.
In 1944, Frederick Leupold died in hospital after a surgeons knife nicked his bladder during a routine operation.
Legend has it Marcus idea followed a shot he muffed on a deer hunt.
He decided L&S could build a better telescopic sight.
The result was uninspiring but functional.
Sleeves on the tube adjusted windage and elevation.
It was not air-tight, so it fogged.
Tackling this problem, Marcus borrowed from the Merchant Marine.
To keep optics fog-free on ships, engineers replaced air in the tubes with nitrogen.
In 1946, Leupold introduced the 212X Plainsman.
Marcus Leupold saw a future in optical sights.
Leupolds first 1scope, the 4X Mountaineer, came in 1954.
A 6X Mountaineer and an 8X Westerner followed.
In 1960, the company introduced M-7 riflescopes, first a 3X and a 4X.
A 3-9x came in 1961.
M-8 fixed-power scopes arrived in 1964, the 3-9X Vari-X II soon after.
These scopes were first to wear the signature gold ring, installed between the objective housing and lock ring.
One of Leupolds most successful features, the Duplex reticle, appeared in 1962.
Prominent bars lead to a slim middle crosswire.
Elegantly simple, it offers both fast and precise aim.
To its credit, Leupold has long offered the dot reticle too.
Lee, the simple dot is devilishly hard to produce.
In a dark, draft-proof booth at Leupold Ive seen dots installed in targeted light on impossibly thin filament.
The technician spared me not a glance, only a curt: Just dont breathe.
A 712X M-8 and a 2-732 Vari-X II joined Leupolds line in 1966.
Leupold Vari-X IIs and Vari-X IIIs became two of the best-selling hunting scopes ever.
Leupold scopes owe much of their appeal to a made-in-USA provenance.
The company has also cashed in on tough, with durable scopes and a warranty to back them.
The scope came back from Beaverton in days, not weeks, like new.
Another Leupold-topped rifle was buried under 12 feet of mud as Mt.
St. Helens lost her top.
The homeowner dug it out.
The Leupold worked very well.
Such enduring optics impress hunters.
And no company markets to the Vibram-booted better than Leupold.
Catalogs and ads ooze North American hunting.
Thats why hunters, competitors and snipers lean on theirs and not always gently when a bulletmusthit its mark.
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