Rosebud began as a Northern Pacific railroad siding in 1882 and grew into a busy homesteading community. When Fred and Mary Mefford arrived from the Midwest in 1896, the town had 300 residents. Mary, a devoted Episcopalian, founded a sewing circle that became an active church guild and taught Sunday school, while Fred arranged for a minister from Miles City to come regularly to Rosebud to hold services in the schoolhouse. In 1906, they decided to build a church. Fred donated the land and hired local builder Alfred Drescher to supervise construction. He also canceled a $300 debt owed to his hardware store in exchange for cottonwood logs cut from farmer Billy Merrill’s land and hauled to the site. The resulting square-notched log church, named St. Philip’s Episcopal, had decorative shingles in the south gable end, a square hip-roofed bell tower, and Gothic arched windows with stained glass imported from Bavaria. Nearly everyone in town, Episcopalian and non-Episcopalian alike, helped build it. Store owner Rod McCrae, who also served as Rosebud’s postmaster, justice of the peace, and first schoolteacher, donated the bell, which arrived upriver by steamboat, and proceeds from a St. Patrick’s Day dance paid for the first organ. In 1968, the Episcopal diocese sold the building, and today it operates as the Rosebud Community Chapel.