In 1898 droves of young men headed over Chilkoot Pass to wrest riches from frozen Alaskan dirt. Like many, Adam Voelpel and Fred Leupold found nothing but hardship in the Klondike. They returned to Massachusetts, where Leupold had landed seven years earlier.

The Northeast 70th St. location of Leupold & Volpel in 1938. Marcus and Fred Leupold and Adam Voelpel, left to right, are standing to the far left in the front row.

Markus Frederick Leupold was an only child, born in Ravensburg, Wuerttenburg, Germany. After his mother died of tuberculosis, his father remarried. Evidently young Frederick didn't get along with his stepmother, because at age sixteen he sailed for America. While he spoke only broken English, the Northeast at that time was awash with immigrants. Frederick's skill with tools and knowledge of engineering brought him work almost immediately. The pay was good too--about $12 a week for six ten-hour days. He proved himself a valuable employee at the Boston firm C.L. Berger & Sons, maker of survey instruments. The company took him back after his return from Alaska.

In 1899 Frederick Leupold married Rose Voelpel, his friend's sister. Asthmatic and itching for another taste of the West, Adam Voelpel soon left Boston for the New Mexico Territory. In 1907 Frederick Leupold followed Adam across the Mississippi, looking for a place to start his own business, and settled on Portland, Oregon, a rapidly growing city with vestiges of the frontier.

Frederick set up a modest shop to build and repair survey instruments. Adam soon joined him, though he had contributed money to the new business even before Frederick had opened its doors. Later he would change the spelling of his last name to Volpel; however, the firm initially presented itself as Leupold & Voelpel. The two men built most of their early transits almost entirely by hand, turning out just a dozen a year.

With a shift in focus to riflescopes in the 1940s, the company increased its size in both employees and equipment.

Frederick Leupold's first son, Marcus, was born in 1900. Another boy, Norbert, followed in 1906. Sister Pauline came in 1908. Frederick passed his love of music on to son Marcus. Tutored in piano since age seven, he later performed in local concerts, including the 1924 debut of the Portland Junior Symphony. There he met Ruth Saunders, a violinist from the eastern-Oregon town of Burns. They married a year later.

As important as music was to Marcus, the family business mattered more. He showed his loyalty when at age twenty-two he turned down a teaching job in the University of Oregon's music department to continue working with his father.

In 1914 inventor J.C. "Jack" Stevens joined the firm as a partner. He'd recognized the need for a hydrologic (water-level) recorder that would operate unattended for long periods. Recorders of the day had to be checked once a week. Stevens devised a recorder that required checking just twice a year. Invention in hand, he went shopping for a firm to build it. The reputation of Leupold & Voelpel for high-quality work drew him to NE 70th Street, where in 1911 he signed a royalty agreement. A year later Jack Stevens traveled to Spain to help with the design of hydroelectric plants. Upon his return to Portland, Frederick Leupold and Adam Voelpel offered him a partnership, subsequently changing the company name to Leupold, Volpel & Co.