Twenty years before Wisconsin became a state, the discovery of vast lead deposits brought a population boom to this area. Green Bay merchant Daniel Whitney organized the Wisconsin Shot Company to build a shot tower on this site. T.B. Shaunce dug out the shafts with pick and gad and removed the earth in buckets. Men like Daniel Whitney and T.B. Shaunce worked with humble tools and crude methods, utilizing engineering ideas and principles that provided the highly sophisticated procedures of today's manufacturing engineers.