About
About Us
Before we were a company, we were a family.
Fred Leupold and Adam Volpel-who had been brothers-in-law for eight years and close friends before that-go into business together.
Their company, Leupold & Volpel makes surveying equipment by hand.
Fred Leupold makes a promise that guides us to this day:
The customer is entitled to a square deal.
The Family Grows
J.C. Stevens invents the first water level recorder and becomes a partner when he brings it to the company. Fred Leupold’s son, Marcus, comes aboard as well.
Marcus is an avid outdoorsman.
This will become important later.
Phone It In
J.C. Stevens keeps inventing. This time, it’s the Telemark, a revolutionary water level recorder that uses telephone signals to transmit information.
New Blood
Robert Stevens, son of J.C., follows in his father’s footsteps and takes a job with the company.
Business is Booming
Both the family and the company are changing, and our name changes with it.
Our new-and current-name is Leupold & Stevens.
We began as a family business, and we remain a family business. Our co-founder and patriarch, Fred Leupold, passes away.
His son Norbert joins the company after working as a hydraulic engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers.
“Hell! I could build a better scope than this!”
Legend has it that while hunting one day, Marcus Leupold missed a buck because his scope fogged up. He swore he could make a better scope, and that’s just what he did.
Birth of a Plainsman
After years of research-and lessons learned from World War II-we introduce our first riflescope. We call it the Plainsman, and it’s the first truly fog-proof scope built by Americans.
A new era in sporting optics begins.
Free & Clear
What was the secret to our first fog-free scope?
We evacuated the air out of the scope’s interior and filled it with pure nitrogen, which doesn’t react to sudden changes in temperature.
That’s how Marcus Leupold kept his word, and we’ve kept it ever since.
1968 A New Home
As business keeps growing, we move into our new manufacturing plant and headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
1974
We introduce the industry’s first lightweight, high-power target scope…
1982
The company expands
Featuring 30 different models and employing over 500 Americans.
One of the Team
Werner emigrated from Germany in 1958 after receiving a job offer in the mail from Marcus Leupold. He started as a manufacturing technician and took on more and more responsibility over the years. He eventually took on the company’s top position…