One of the most unique shot towers in the world was built between 1831 and 1833 in Helena , Wisconsin . The location has special significance in Wisconsin history as the site of the lead region village of Helena and the place where Green Bay entrepreneur, Daniel Whitney, and his partner, T. B. Shaunce  built a tower to make lead shot. This is not your classic shot tower, one that rises several hundred feet with the whole operation above ground, similar to the Phoenix Tower in Baltimore or the Sparks Tower in Philadelphia . This tower was basically a deep shaft in the ground from a smelting house near the top of a cliff above the Wisconsin River and a finishing house near the base. The shaft was hand dug by Whitney and Shaunce with pick and gag (pry bar) and removed the earth with buckets. Men like Whitney and Shaunce worked with humble tools and crude methods. 

     The energetic Yankee entrepreneur who had come to Green Bay in the 1820s, Whitney delved into a wide variety of potentially profitable ventures – lumbering on the upper Wisconsin , fur trading, and town-site speculation. He formed a business partnership to manufacture lead shot in 1830 at a time when Wisconsin had no shot tower and he hoped to market lead in the East. Construction began in 1831 and was completed in 1833, having been interrupted by the Black Hawk War.

The Shot Tower

     The shot tower operated intermittently under various owners from 1833 until 1861. Shot making involved a (1) smelting house at the top of the cliff, (2) the 60 foot wooden shot tower shaft itself at the top of the sandstone cliff, (3) a 120-foot shaft cut through the rock beneath the wooden tower, (4) and a 90-foot access tunnel leading to a finishing house beside the Wisconsin River.

     The shot drop was a total of 180 feet including a 60 foot wood shaft and a 120 foot underground shaft to the base. The shot was removed through a horizontal 90 foot shaft to daylight along the Wisconsin River to a finishing house.

     Molten lead poured into a perforated ladle, dropped 180 feet, and formed shot as it fell, landing in a pool of water at the bottom of the shaft. Cooled shot was loaded into horse-drawn railcars and drawn through the tunnel to the finishing house for drying and polishing. The tower could produce 5,000 pounds of shot per day.

     Then it was loaded aboard boats on the Wisconsin River which at that time flowed past the base of the bluff. Helena was a sufficiently prosperous mining community in 1836 to make a serious bid for the territorial capital. When in 1856 Spring Green secured the railroad connection and Helena was bypassed, it began to wither in the ensuing depression of the late 1850s.

     Foundations of the Helena buildings still remain in the Tower Hill State Park near Spring Green, Wisconsin . The mining community of Helena is long gone.