Badger Park and Wisconsin’s Badger State name both came from this mining area, where some miners, like badgers, dug in for the winter while others, called “suckers,” moved south. The park includes 8½ acres of land once valued for lead deposits found in 1838 and 1839, when 50 square feet of ground with mining rights sold for $250.00. It lies east of Badger Hill, where Jesse W. Shull, founder of Shullsburg, built his home about 1818. The park’s west boundary, now Scales Mound Road, was once the Galena Wagon Road, traveled by General Grant, who watered his horse at the “Bull Pump” built by Beon Gratiot, who began mining on the spot now occupied by the park. Powered by a bull, the pump probably was the first water pump in this territory used to control water in mine shafts. In 1934, during Dr. Henry F. Hoesley’s term as mayor, the city council bought the land for the park. It became a WPA project approved by the U.S. Government, begun in September 1935 and completed without costing taxpayers any extra taxes, and its shelter houses and bathhouse were built of native stone.