Shullsburg's downtown has a new lease on life, thanks to efforts by the city, merchants, property owners, the Shullsburg Community Development Corporation and citizens who have joined together. Over the past five years, Water Street has seen improvements from the pavement up to the rooftops of restored historic buildings. Shullsburg's main thoroughfare, Water Street, was always a center of commerce. Now a cluster of retail shops and restaurants are sprinkled among the 44 buildings on the National and State Registers of Historic Places. Three of the buildings, including Tailings Country Store, are pre-Civil War.
Tailings offers primitives, garden items, candles and country accents.
Donna Shepherd, owner of Tailings, was one of the first in the new wave of shopkeepers. Her store marked its 10th anniversary in October. It is a gorgeous building. It was something I always wanted to do. When other people saw that her store survived and then prospered, it brought other shops to Water Street.