Badger Park took its name, like Wisconsin’s Badger State nickname, from local miners who “dug-in” for the winter like badgers, 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, an early miner on the site. Powered by a bull, the pump probably was the first water pump in this territory used to control water in mine shafts by raising water from the mine. In 1934, during Mayor Dr. Henry F. Hoesley’s term, the city council bought the land for a park, and as a WPA project approved by the U.S. Government, work began in September 1935 and was completed without any extra tax cost to taxpayers. The shelter houses and bathhouse were built of native stone to endure.