Alton is a city in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about 15 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 34,511 at the 2006 census.
The Alton area was home to Native Americans for thousands of years before the 19th-century founding of the modern city by European Americans. Historic accounts indicate occupation of this area by the Illiniwek or Illinois Confederacy at the time of European contact. Earlier native settlement is dem...
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Alton is a city in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about 15 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri. The population was 34,511 at the 2006 census.
The Alton area was home to Native Americans for thousands of years before the 19th-century founding of the modern city by European Americans. Historic accounts indicate occupation of this area by the Illiniwek or Illinois Confederacy at the time of European contact. Earlier native settlement is demonstrated by archaeological artifacts and the famous, prehistoric Piasa bird painted on a cliff face nearby, first written about in 1673 by French priest Father Jacques Marquette.
Alton was developed as a river town in 1818 by Rufus Easton, who named it after his son. Easton ran a passenger ferry service across the Mississippi River to the Missouri shore. Alton is located amid the confluence of three important navigable rivers: the Illinois, the Mississippi, and the Missouri. A monument and multilevel observatory, located at the confluence of...
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