In the early 1850s, mostly English settlers, along with some Irish and a few Swiss immigrants, first settled the northern area of Franklin Township in Sauk County, Wisconsin. Known first as Carpenters’ Settlement after Daniel Carpenter and Jacob Henry, its earliest landowners, the community took the name White Mound in 1859 when a post office was established in a home on what is now Dawn Road across the valley. The name came from whitish limestone rock once protruding from the side of the nearby high hill, and the remains of a lime kiln can still be seen in White Mound Park about 2 miles northwest on Highway GG. Early settlers grew wheat in the valley and raised hops in the 1860s until the crash of 1868. By the late 1880s, many of the early settlers had moved west or to the Reedsburg or Spring Green area, and many German immigrants moved in, bringing crop rotation and manure use. A stage stop first stood on the J.B. Carpenter place, later the Walter Bindl farm, and after a store was built, the post office and stage stop moved there; the post office remained until 1918. The settlement’s cheese factory, blacksmith shop, and store stood west of Shortcut Road, while the saloon, garage, and church stood east of it, with horse stables along the road where patrons left their horses while shopping, collecting mail, dancing, or socializing. Billytown, named for William Welch, began with the first store opened on January 1, 1899; after it burned in February 1901, it was rebuilt that same year with the post office and living quarters upstairs, reached by an outside stairway on the east side, and a dance hall was later added on the west side. The building burned again on Halloween Eve in 1921 and was never rebuilt. In the fall of 1905, Andy Hutter built a blacksmith shop next to the cheese factory and sold it in 1908 to Merton Prouty. From the 1880s to the early 1930s, Billytown flourished briefly as a lively local hub where farmers brought milk, bought staples and supplies, picked up mail, stopped for bier, exchanged neighborhood gossip, discussed crops, and gathered for dances, picnics, plays, spelling bees, raffles, and Fourth of July fireworks atop White Mound.