Jackson Ferry Shot Tower
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Shot Tower
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| Location | W of jct. of Rte. 608 and U.S. 52, Shot Tower Historical State Park, near Max Meadows, Virginia |
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| Coordinates | 36°52′12″N 80°52′14″W / 36.87000°N 80.87056°WCoordinates: 36°52′12″N 80°52′14″W / 36.87000°N 80.87056°W |
| Area | 0 acres (0 ha) |
| Built | 1807 |
| NRHP Reference # | 69000286 |
| VLR # | 098-0016 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 1, 1969 |
| Designated VLR | November 5, 1968 |
The Jackson Ferry Shot Tower is 75-foot (23 m) tall shot tower located in Wythe County, Virginia. It is one of only a few remaining shot towers in the United States. It was built by Thomas Jackson and is the centerpiece of the Shot Tower Historical State Park. Construction began on the tower shortly after the American Revolutionary War and was completed in 1807. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 1, 1969.
Shot Towers were often referred to as Shot Factories during the industry's heyday. Today they stand as testaments to ingenious yet antiquated technology. The purpose of the shot tower was to produce lead shot to be used in firearms. Firewood and lead were taken to the top of the tower, where a furnace was fired to melt the lead. The molten lead was then poured through a sieve, which would form individual drops of lead of a specific size. Different sieves were used to produce shot of varying size. The molten drops would then free-fall 150 feet, during which they would become spherical in shape, and cool enough to become rigid. A large kettle full of water at the bottom would finish the cooling process, and provide a soft enough landing to keep the shot from deforming. The finished shot was then sold to hunters, traders and merchants.
An advertisement in the August 30, 1791 edition of the Virginia Chronicle detailing the manufacturing of shot at the Shot Factory in Southwest Virginia may suggest that the tower dates back to before 1800.
Welshman William Herbert, an expert ore smelter, and his extended family were living in Bristol, England when he accepted the offer to come to the Virginia wilderness and make the mines profitable. He designed the "shot tower" much like the one he was familiar with in Bristol, built in 1753 by William Watts, his former employer. William Watts later patented the method used to drip the molten lead from a considerable height into the body of water below, a process "for making small shot perfectly globular in form and without dimples, notches and imperfections which other shot hereto manufactured usually have on their surface".
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