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With the arrival of railroads and the subsequent homesteading boom, between 1900 and 1920, 28 new counties were created in Montana, including Rosebud County in 1901. On February 28, 1901, Albyn Buchanan published the first issue of the Rosebud County News, an eight-page, five-column weekly. A continuation of Miles City’s the News, the paper continued to feature Miles City content after it moved to Forsyth, the county seat, in 1901.

Born in Ontario, Canada, in 1869, Albyn Buchanan was a well-connected newspaper publisher and artist. An energetic booster for the state, he was active in the Billings Booster Club and Montana Business Men's League. In 1905, Buchanan joined a scouting party to plot a new road from Red Lodge, Montana, into Yellowstone National Park. In 1912, he authored the promotional booklet Seeing Miles City, and he drew "An Airplane View of the State of Montana," a cartoon map that appeared in the Harlem Enterprise on December 21, 1916.

In the first issue of the Rosebud County News, Buchanan wrote: "The law declaring the division of Custer county by which Rosebud county comes into official being tomorrow has isolated a large territory from which this paper derived much of its support [and] made it expedient for the former publisher to either remove to the new county seat or sell the paper, lock, stock and barrel, as the field in what is now Custer county is entirely too small to support three newspapers. This afforded the present publisher an opportunity of securing a splendidly equipped printing plant, with the additional advantage of coming into possession of an established newspaper..."

The Rosebud County News featured passenger schedules for the Northern Pacific Railway, which linked central Montana with Minnesota in the east and Washington state in the west. In 1908, Forsyth also became a division point on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. Along with plentiful local news, the paper reprinted state, national and international stories. The back page pictured local cattle brands and included a dairy and poultry column. Its editor proclaimed the newspaper’s political independence and a desire to avoid political alliances. The Rosebud County News published its last article in 1906.

Provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT