HIGHLAND — The first year he planted soybeans in the 22-acre field at the edge of town, Kurt Menke noticed something odd: His crop came up healthy, but sometime in June the plants in one section all died.
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Tom Hunt surveys the remnants of a 19th-century limestone furnace along Highway 191 near Dodgeville. Aside from such relics there are few visible markers of the lead and zinc mining industry that defined southwestern Wisconsin in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Mine workers hold candles in this undated photo. The work was backbreaking, especially before World War II, when almost everything was done by hand.
Cattle graze in front of a tailings pile at a lead mine in this undated photo. The waste rocks could still contain dangerous levels of lead.
A pile of rocks amid corn fields at the site of the former Mulcahy Mine near Shullsburg. The mine operated from 1950 to 1955, producing less than 200,000 tons of ore, according to mining historian Loren Farrey.
Loren Farrey, author of a guide to mining sites of Lafayette County, demonstrates how lead ore was pulled from mine shafts with a model windlass built by his wife, Arlene.
A recess in a hillside of Tom Hunt's property near Ridgeway reveals evidence of the mining that took place in the 1830s, when southwestern Wisconsin was one of the nation's primary sources of lead. Using picks and shovels, miners dug shallow "badger holes" in search of iron sulfide, or galena.
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