Note 66 — VII
Reading edition
For location and date of settlement of Herculaneum, see Maximilian's Travels, in our volume xxii, p. 212, note 122.
On a perpendicular bluff, more than a hundred feet in height, in the vicinity of Herculaneum, J. Macklot erected (1809) what was probably the first shot-tower this side of the Atlantic. The next year one Austin built another tower at the same point. According to H. R. Schoolcraft in his View of the Lead Mines of Missouri (New York, 1819), pp. 138, 139, there were in 1817 three shot-towers near Herculaneum, producing in the eighteen months ending June 1 of that year, 668,350 pounds of shot. From the top of small wooden towers erected on the edge of the bluff, the melted lead was poured through holes in copper pans or sieves.—Ed.