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Woods Runner

Mineral Point is where Wisconsin began during the 1820s, when prospectors were swarming over the hills of Southwestern Wisconsin looking for lead. After lead, or "mineral," was discovered here, a "lead rush" began and the mining camp that formed around the diggings eventually was called Mineral Point. Tradition dates permanent settlement in the area by Europeans to 1827.

Lead mining was important enough that when Wisconsin became a state in 1848, one quadrant of the great seal of the new state showed a miner holding a pick. However, with discovery of gold that year in California, expectations of great wealth lured area miners to the next "promised land" just as the easily accessible lead deposits were playing out. Despite the drop in lead production from its peak in 1845, southwestern Wisconsin was still the most important lead-producing district in the nation during the middle of the 19th century.

A second mining boom was about to hit when it was discovered that the great piles of zinc carbonate that had been discarded as a worthless by-product of lead mining were exceedingly rich in metallic zinc. Actually the zinc carbonate, known as dry-bone, became more plentiful as the lead mines went deeper. By the 1870s, zinc production far exceeded that of lead, with lead in turn becoming a by-product. Even deeper down, rich deposits of zinc sulphide were found and the boom was on in earnest. A railroad was built to bring the ore for processing into zinc oxide (the basic ingredient of good paint at the time) and sulfuric acid at a huge plant built here. In 1891, the Mineral Point Zinc Co. had the largest zinc oxide works in the United States. The zinc mining industry reached its peak in 1917 and then declined rapidly, until the last zinc mine in the area closed in 1979.

In the meantime, agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism gradually became major components of the economic base. What remains of the periods of lead- and zinc-produced prosperity is the town's wealth of fine architectural treasures, its Cornish heritage, and it's frontier and mining traditions.