This is a narrative description from G. W. Featherstonhaugh, who voyaged down the Wisconsin River in 1836 and 1837.

"This shot tower was not one of the ordinary columns that rise to a great height from the surface, but was a cylindrical excavation, ingeniously made in an escarpment of the incoherent sandstone, 200 feet in height. The lead was melted at the top, and afterwward poured down to a chamber below".

"On reaching the shot tower on the bank of the Wisconsin, I found everything much improved since my visit here in 1835. Although called a tower, it was, in fact a perpendicular cylinder cut from the top of the escarpment through the incoherent sandstone to a depth of one hundred and eighty feet, and the adit below from the surface of the escarpment to the water-tub was 90 feet long. Their method in the manufacturing of shot was to put ten pounds of arsenic to every one thousand pounds of galena, to make the lead brittle and disposed to separate; three-fourths of this arsenic evaporates whilst melting, and does not combine with the lead. The lead, when melted a second time, is poured through a perforated ladle, and falls from the top of the tower into the water below in all sorts of sizes and shapes. When taken out and dried, it is poured over a series of inclined planes, separated by small troughs. Those globules which are quite orbicular, run over all the planes, while the imperfect ones waddle along, and being sometimes double and having no spring in their movements, drop into the troughs and are melted over again. The perfect shot are finally sifted into a machine containing various drawers with their bottoms perforated in holes of all sizes, from buckhot to mustard-seed. This machine is moved by the hand. The shot, when separated into sorts, is gladed and put into bags".