Galena, Illinois called Galena "La Pointe" and early Americans adopted this name as "The Point". Early documentation officially records the name as "Fever River", an early name for the Galena River, though it does not appear that this name was commonly used. George Davenport, a retired colonel in the United States Army, successfully shipped Galena's first boatload of lead ore down the Mississippi River in 1816. Three years later, Jesse W. Shull built a trading post. The Thomas H. January family, who arrived in 1821 from Maysville, Kentucky, are considered the first permanent American settlers. The next year, the US Department of
Metal subsurface mines. In some cases, the sale price of the metal/s involved make it economically feasible to mine lower concentration sources. Once the ore is mined, the metals must be extracted, usually by chemical or electrolytic reduction. Pyrometallurgy uses high temperatures to convert ore into raw metals, while hydrometallurgy employs aqueous chemistry for the same purpose. The methods used depend on the metal and their contaminants. When a metal ore is an ionic compound of that metal and a non-metal, the ore must usually be smelted—heated with a reducing agent—to extract the pure metal. Many common metals, such as iron,