Shot Towers: A Strange but Necessary Bit of History

If you lived in the United States in the nineteenth century, the need for hunting and defending yourself and your family from predators meant that you required a ready supply of ammunition for your guns and rifles. The forests and the prairies were your grocery stores. If you had the materials, skills, space, and time, you could make enough bullets for your personal use, but there was also ongoing conflict between indigenous people and sprawling American settlers, and there were wars and other military skirmishes creating continuous demand for gun shot. There was, however, an inherent problem with the way gun shot was created.