Helena

The story

Helena existed to make lead shot. In 1831 a crew began digging a 120-foot vertical shaft into a bluff above the Wisconsin River, plus a 90-foot tunnel out to the riverbank, so that molten lead from the rich mines of southwestern Wisconsin could be dropped down the shaft — the falling droplets pulling themselves into perfect spheres before splashing into a water basin at the bottom. The tower opened in 1832 and turned out 600 to 800 pounds of shot a day, hauled overland to Milwaukee and shipped east. A village grew at the river's edge to serve it.

The town had bad timing from the start: soon after it was built, the U.S. Army tore much of Helena apart during the 1832 Black Hawk War, using the lumber to raft troops across the river. The villagers rebuilt and carried on until the shot tower shut down in 1860, after which the railroad bypassed the site and Helena quietly disappeared.

In 1889 the Unitarian minister Jenkin Lloyd Jones bought the hill for sixty dollars and made it a summer retreat; his family later gave it to the state. It is now Tower Hill State Park, where the reconstructed shot tower stands over the original shaft and tunnel and the foundations of the vanished town.

What remains today

The reconstructed Helena shot tower, the original 120-foot shaft and finishing tunnel, and building foundations, all within Tower Hill State Park.