The park lies within the Driftless Area, a region of the American Midwest that remained ice-free through three successive ice ages.

Whitney formed the Wisconsin Shot Company with some other investors, and set his employee John Metcalf to oversee construction.

Shaunce calculated where to begin digging the horizontal tunnel by standing across the water and sighting with his rifle directly below the top of the shaft.

[5] The project took 187 working days, interrupted in the spring of 1832 when Shaunce and Smith both returned to Galena and enlisted in the Illinois Militia to fight in the Black Hawk War.

[5] Historians have noted that the Helena Shot Tower, which allowed a frontier resource to be shipped in a finished form, was significant in the settlement and prosperity of southwestern Wisconsin.

[4][6] The overland teamster route developed to transport the operation's output to the east evolved into a road and then a rail line.

[7] Southwestern Wisconsin, once more closely tied to the Southern United States via the Mississippi River, built a population and culture closer to the northeast.

[4] In 1889 the site was purchased for $60 by the prominent Unitarian minister Jenkin Lloyd Jones, a member of a well-known Welsh-American family in the region.

One 1894 lecturer, a history professor, spent his free time excavating the shot tower's shaft and recovered several pieces of equipment which Lloyd Jones donated to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Structures remaining from the Tower Hill Pleasure Company include the pavilion (now the park's picnic shelter), a gazebo, and the foundation of a barn.

Nearby attractions include Taliesin, the American Players Theatre, the House on the Rock, and Governor Dodge State Park.