Alton is a city in Madison County in western Illinois, United States. In 2020, Alton had a population of 25,676. The city is located in Metro-East, the eastern part of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area surrounding the city of St. Louis in neighboring Missouri.
Landmarks
Piasa Bird's painting on the cliffs northwest of the city.
Elijah
P. Lovejoy Monument. A 110-foot-tall monument to the famous abolitionist
and free speech advocate who was murdered by an anti-slavery mob. This
monument is located in the Alton Cemetery on the bluff.
Located in
the North Alton Confederate Cemetery, this is a monument to the 1,354
Confederate soldiers who died in the Alton prison.
The Franklin
House, later known as the Lincoln Hotel and now as the Lincoln Lofts.
Lincoln is believed to have dined here and spent the night when he
visited Alton on October 15, 1858, for his seventh debate with Stephen
Douglas. Lincoln Douglas Square, at the corner of Landmark and Broadway,
features statues of Lincoln and Douglas. This was the site of the last
debate before the 1858 Illinois Senate election.
The Beall Mansion
was designed by noted architect Lucas Pfeifenberger and built in 1902
and 1903. It was the private residence of Edmund Beall, who served as
mayor of Alton and state senator four times.
Saints Peter and Paul
Roman Catholic Church; over 150 years old and served as the cathedral
for the Diocese of Alton under three bishops (1857-1923); in 1923, the
diocesan cathedral was moved from Alton to Springfield.
First
Unitarian Church, located at 110 Third Street, was built on the
foundation of St. Matthew Catholic Church, which burned down in the
1850s. The church is said to be haunted by former pastor Philip Mercer,
who committed suicide inside the church on November 20, 1934. It was
also a popular spot on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War.
The Mineral Springs Hotel, located at 301 East Broadway, opened in 1914
because of a natural spring on the property. In its heyday in 1918,
Hollywood actress Marie Dressler spoke at the hotel on behalf of the
Liberty Loan Commission. The hotel closed in 1971 and became an outlet
mall in 1978. It is also considered one of the most haunted places in
the city, attracting ghost hunters from all over the United States.
The statue of Robert Pershing Wadlow is the tallest person in recorded
world history.
Clark Bridge (1994), a cable-stayed bridge.
Meeting
of the Rivers National Scenic Byway, which runs through the city
adjacent to Riverfront Park.
Argosy Casino Alton, owned by Penn
National Gaming.
The National Great Rivers Museum offers daily tours
of Melvin Price Locks and Dam, the newest and busiest lock and dam
complex on the mainstem Mississippi River.
South of the Melvin Price
Locks and Dam, the Audubon Center at Riverlands has a small museum and
is a well-known spot for birders.
The Alton Riverfront Amphitheater
at Riverfront Park in Alton overlooks the Mississippi River, the Clark
Bridge, and the Alton Marina.
Alton once grew faster than the neighboring city of St. Louis, but a
coalition of St. Louis businessmen planned to build a competing town to
stop Alton's expansion and bring business to St. Louis. The resulting
town was Grafton, Illinois.
Alton has many homes built in the
Victorian Queen Anne style. They represent a prosperous period in the
history of the River City. The commercial district on the hilltop, with
its stone churches and several fine municipal buildings, testifies to
the affluence of the city during its prosperous days of river
transportation, manufacturing, and shipping. This was the commercial
center of a vast agricultural area. Numerous residences on the hilltop
overlook the Mississippi River.
The Alton area was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before the modern city was built by European Americans in the 19th century. Historical accounts indicate that the Illinois Confederacy occupied the area at the time of European contact. Earlier Native settlement is attested to by archaeological artifacts and the famous prehistoric piasa bird painted on the surface of a nearby cliff. The statue was painted in 1673 by Father Jacques Marquette, a French missionary priest.
Alton was developed as a river town by Rufus Easton in January 1818.
Easton operated a passenger ferry across the Mississippi River to the
Missouri coast. Alton is located at the confluence of three rivers: the
Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri. Alton developed as a river trading
town and took on the character of an industrial city; during the 19th
and 20th centuries, massive concrete grain silos and railroad tracks
were built to store and ship the region's grain and agricultural
products. Brick commercial buildings line the downtown area. Alton, once
home to several brick factories, has an unusually large number of
streets paved with brick. Alton's low-rise areas are susceptible to
flooding, much of which inundated the historic downtown district. A
large grain silo, part of the Ardent Mills near the Argosy Casino on the
waterfront, bears the date of the flood; the 1993 flood is considered
the worst of the last century. Because Illinois was a free state
separated from slave Missouri only by the Mississippi River, Alton
became an important town for abolitionists. Abolitionist activists also
lived in the town, and slave catchers often raided the town. Escaped
slaves took refuge in Alton by crossing the river to safety via the
Underground Railroad station. In the years before the Civil War, tunnels
and Underground Railroad station shelters were built in several houses
to aid slaves fleeing to the North. on November 7, 1837, Reverend Elijah
P. Lovejoy, an abolitionist printer, was murdered by a mob of
emancipationists while trying to protect his printing plant in Alton
from being destroyed for the third time. He was murdered by the He had
moved from St. Louis because of his opposition in St. Louis. He had
printed many abolitionist booklets and distributed them throughout the
area. When one of the mob tried to set fire to an old warehouse, Lovejoy
went outside armed only with a pistol to try to stop him. The
pro-slavery man shot him dead (with a shotgun, five times through the
giblets). The mob stormed the warehouse and threw Lovejoy's printing
press into the Mississippi River. Thus Lovejoy became the first martyr
of the abolitionist movement.
Alton became the seat of a Catholic
Church diocese in 1857. Its first bishop was French-born Henry Damian
Yunker. The new diocese had 58 churches, 18 priests, and 50,000
Catholics. Eleven years after his death, there were 125 churches, more
than 100 priests, and 80,000 Catholics. He was succeeded by Peter Joseph
Barthes (1869-1886) and James Ryan (1888-1923), both from Germany; in
1923 the bishopric was moved to Springfield, Illinois. The Diocese of
Alton is no longer a residential bishopric, but today is considered an
ex officio bishopric in the Catholic Church. So far, John Clayton
Nienstedt and Jos. Iriondo have been appointed.
On October 15,
1858, Alton was the site of the 7th Lincoln-Douglas Debates. An
oversized statue of Lincoln and Douglas was placed on a monument in
downtown Alton. Congressional delegates visited Alton when they drafted
the 13th Amendment to the Constitution to permanently abolish slavery
throughout the Union. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Alton is chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee and co-author of the 13th Amendment. His
Alton home, the Lyman Trumbull House, is listed as a National Historic
Landmark[source needed].
Just two weeks before the American Civil
War, Alton played a role in the infamous Camp Jackson affair that led to
the ouster of Missouri Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson. Missouri's
neutrality was tested in the conflict over the St. Louis Arsenal. The
federal government reinforced the arsenal's small garrison with several
detachments, including the 2nd Infantry, led by Captain Nathaniel Lyon.
Concerned by widespread reports that Governor Jackson intended to use
Missouri volunteer militias to attack the arsenal and seize 39,000 small
arms, Secretary of War Simon Cameron ordered Lyon (then acting
commander) to evacuate most of the weapons to Illinois. 21,000 firearms
were secretly evacuated to Alton, Illinois, on the night of April 29,
1861.
The first prison in Illinois was built in Alton. It once
extended as far as nearby "Church Hill," although only a corner remains
within a few blocks of the river. Used by the Union Army to house
prisoners of war during the American Civil War, the site housed
approximately 12,000 Confederate soldiers, and in 1863-1864, a smallpox
epidemic killed an estimated 1,500 to 2,200 people. A Confederate mass
grave north of Alton housed many of the deaths from this epidemic, and a
monument marks its location. When Confederate prisoners of war escaped,
they often attempted to cross the Mississippi River to return to the
slave state of Missouri.
Alton native Robert Pershing Wadlow, listed in the Guinness Book of
World Records as the world's tallest man at 8 feet 11.1 inches (2.72 m)
tall, is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in the area known as Upper Alton.
The soil covering his grave has been elevated so that it can be compared
in length with other graves. A monument containing a life-size bronze
statue and a replica of his chair stands on College Avenue across from
the Southern Illinois University School of Dentistry.
The
motherhouse of the American Jurisdiction of the Order of St. George
Francis the Martyr is located in Alton.
In 1937, two commercial
fishermen from Alton caught a bull shark in the Mississippi River. Late
that summer, they noticed something wrong with their wood and net traps.
Deciding it was a fish, they built a trap out of tough wire and baited
it with chicken entrails. The next morning they caught a 5-foot 84-pound
shark and displayed it at the Calhoun Fish Market.
During World
War II, seven of the brothers joined the military and became veterans of
various decorations. Among them were Millard Glenn Gray, who was awarded
the Medal of Honor by Douglas MacArthur, and Neil Gray, who received the
Silver Star.
In 1954, the city of Alton was selected as one of
three finalists for the site of the new U.S. Air Force Academy. Alton
lost out to the proposed site in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Because Alton is on the Mississippi River, the flood of 1993, when water
levels were high, caused severe damage to Alton. Alton's water supply
was cut off by the flood, and townspeople had to be supplied with
bottled water for more than three weeks. Many local businesses,
including Anheuser-Busch of St. Louis, donated funds to help the people
of Alton. The original bridge connecting Alton and West Alton, Missouri,
was a two-lane (one lane in each direction) bridge that was a hazard to
motorists and a hindrance to emergency vehicles. The bridge, located at
the northernmost point of the St. Louis metropolitan area, was
demolished in the 1990s. The current Clark Bridge opened in 1994, with
two lanes of divided traffic in each direction and a two-lane bike lane.
Construction was underway during the 1993 flood. The award-winning
cable-stayed bridge was designed by Hanson Engineers of Springfield,
Illinois. The same cables for the bridge were distributed at educational
sites in the city so that children in the city could "take a piece of
the bridge home". The complex construction of the bridge, which had to
deal with strong river currents, barge traffic, and the 1993 flood, was
featured in the documentary Super Bridge on Nova.
In 2021, the city's voters elected David Goins as Alton's first black mayor.
Alton is located along the Mississippi River at the mouth of the
Missouri River. Most of Alton is situated on bluffs overlooking the
river valley. The Meeting of the Great Rivers National Scenic Byway runs
along the river in Alton. Next to the confluence of the Missouri and
Mississippi rivers in neighboring Hartford, Illinois, stands Confluence
Tower, a monument and observation tower overlooking the Great Rivers
region. This is also the starting point of the famous Lewis and Clark
expedition. Also, Lock and Dam 26 in Alton is the newest and busiest
lock and dam complex on the mainstem Mississippi River. On the Illinois
side, the National Great Rivers Museum is adjacent and offers tours of
the dam itself several times a day. On the Missouri side is the Audubon
Center at Riverlands, a world-class birding destination due to its
location near the Mississippi Flyway, where the flight paths of the
Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri rivers converge. One can stand at
the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.
According
to the 2010 census, Alton has a total area of 16.736 square miles (43.35
km2), of which 15.47 square miles (40.07 km2) (92.44%) is land and 1.266
square miles (3.28 km2) (7.56%) is water.
The National Great
Rivers Museum is located at the new Lock and Dam No. 26 (Melvin Price
Lock and Dam). The locks and dam are open for tours. The locks are a
popular spot to observe bald eagles, which prey on fish coming upstream
in the waters below the dam. The floodplain and wetland area on the west
side of the river contains a large bird sanctuary.
River Road
runs alongside the river right up to Grafton in the north. North of
that, it often passes inland of the floodplain. The high cliffs on the
Illinois side of the river contrast dramatically with the wide, flat,
green countryside of Portage des Sioux, Missouri. The Great River Road
is a popular bicycle touring route. Hidden in a cliff notch, the tiny
village of Elsa, once a hideout for booze-soaked towboat operators, is
now lined with converted historic homes and antique stores.
The Clark Bridge, over which the U.S. Highway 67 runs south across
the Mississippi to St. Louis. Illinois State Routes 100 and 143, which
form the Illinois section of the Great River Road, lead through the city
along the Mississippi. Illinois State Routes 3, 111 and 140 also meet in
the urban area. All other roads are county roads and sub-intercity
roads.
Several lines from different railroad companies meet in
Alton to run together from here to St. Louis. There is an Amtrak station
within the city for long-distance passenger transport.
St. Louis
Regional Airport is 13.9 km west of Alton and the larger Lambert-Saint
Louis International Airport is 35.9 km southwest of Alton.
As of the 2010 census, Alton had a population of 27,865 (47.8% male
and 52.2% female) with 11,734 households and 6,854 families. The racial
makeup was 68.5% White, 26.6% African American, 0.2% Native American,
0.5% Asian, and 3.7% from two or more races.
Of the 11,734
households, 33.7% were married couples living together (11.9% with
children under 18), 19.2% of households had a female householder without
a husband, 5.6% of households had a male householder without a wife, 41
.6% were not a family. The average household is 2.33 people and the
average family size is 3.00 people.
The population of the city by
age range according to the 2010 census was distributed as follows: 24.1%
- residents under 18 years old, 3.9% - between 18 and 21 years old,
58.1% - from 21 to 65 years old and 13.9% - aged 65 and over. The
average age of the population is 36.0 years. For every 100 women in
Olton, there were 91.6 men, with 87.1 men of comparable age for every
100 adult women.
In 2014, out of 21,650 able-bodied residents
over the age of 16, 10,995 people were employed. At the same time, men
had a median income of $42,212 per year versus $33,483 of the average
annual income for women. In 2014, the median income for a family was
$43,874 and for a household was $36,076. The per capita income is
$20,515. 19.5% of all families in Alton and 24.5% of the total
population were below the poverty line at the time of the census.
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, Alton became a heavy industrial
and manufacturing town; Laclede Steel established a large steel
manufacturing operation in the town. There are also local industries
such as Cope Plastics and Hanley Industries. Alton was home to several
once thriving but now defunct industries, including Owens Illinois Glass
Bottle Works and the Alton Box Board Company (a manufacturer of
corrugated boxes for all purposes).
Industry restructuring in the
mid-20th century gave Alton a new future. It was transformed into a
popular tourist destination with corporate and vacation retreats.
Because of its location and historical heritage, Alton is popular for
antique shopping, sightseeing in historic areas, and gambling at the
Argosy Casino. Other Greater Alton attractions include the Alton Marina,
nine golf courses including Spencer T. Olin, the only Arnold Palmer
designed and managed course in Illinois and the St. Louis metropolitan
area, fine dining and nightlife, a large selection of bed and breakfasts
and guesthouses.
Some visitors come to explore the area's natural
environment. Along the Mississippi River and below the limestone bluffs,
a designated bike path extends for several miles north of town. During
the migration season, Alton is a destination for birdwatchers along the
Mississippi Flyway, and in winter, many visitors come to see the bald
eagles that roost on the Illinois limestone bluffs and forage for fish
in the river. In the winter, visitors come to see bald eagles roost on
the Illinois limestone bluffs and to fish in the rivers. A few miles
north is Pere Marquette State Park, with WPA-era lodges, trails for
hikers and riders, horses for rent, and other attractions.
On
January 28, 2010, Illinois was selected for a $1.2 billion federal award
to bring high-speed passenger rail service to Illinois from 2015-2017.
Alton was chosen as a stop on the line, which runs from St. Louis to
Chicago and opened on September 13, 2017.
Alton won the Small
Business Revolution: Main Street contest and received $100,000 in
support.
Arts.
The Jacoby Arts Center (JAC), formerly the Madison County
Arts Council, is a nonprofit organization that supports local arts and
arts education and is funded in part by the Illinois Arts Council.
Located on Broadway between Henry and Ridge Streets in a building that
housed Jacoby's Furniture Store for nearly 100 years, the JAC is a
regional arts center serving 17 counties in south-central Illinois, with
a public art gallery, a variety of media for adults and children It
offers art classes, a strong performing arts program that includes
monthly live music, and an outlet for the literary arts through programs
such as the "Poetry Out Loud" high school level competition and support
of the Alton Writers Guild.
Alton is also home to the Alton
Symphony Orchestra (ASO), which as of 2011 is in its 66th season and is
one of the premier community orchestras in the Midwest. Musicians range
from teens to senior citizens, and the orchestra presents four
subscription concerts, stylish pop concerts, and children's concerts to
entertain and educate a diverse community.
Theater
Founded in
1934 as a community theater, the Alton Little Theater presents a full
season of plays, comedies, and musicals. The all-volunteer-run theater
brings quality theatrical productions to Alton in a friendly atmosphere.
Each of Alton's high schools also present theatrical productions
throughout the year.
Founded in 1958 by Solveig Sullivan, the
Alton Children's Theater has been bringing live theater to children for
many years. It currently performs in Hathaway Hall at Lewis and Clark
Community College. Over the years, the company has performed for as many
as 10,000 children a year. The all-volunteer theater company hires a
professional director to work with its members to create a week-long
performance each year.
Theodore P. Gilman (1841–1930), banker and politician
Barrelhouse
Buck McFarland (1903–1962), blues and boogie-woogie pianist, singer and
songwriter
Robert Wadlow (1918-1940), tallest human in medical
history whose height is unequivocally documented
Mary Beth Hughes
(1919–1995), actress
Miles Davis (1926–1991), jazz trumpeter
James
Earl Ray (1928–1998), assassin of Martin Luther King
Howard Williams
(1929/30–2018), jazz musician
Kash Killion, jazz bassist
Edward
Joseph Weisenburger (born 1960), Roman Catholic minister and Bishop of
Tucson
Ezekiel Elliott (born 1995), football player