Alton
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Outdoors in Alton
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1910
Noon hour. These boys are all working in the Illinois Glass Co. 1) Smallest boy, Frank (?) Dwyer, 1009 1/2 E. 6 St., sa…, 1910
Photo · Library of Congress
About Alton
City in the United StatesAlton ( AWL-tən) is a city on the Mississippi River in Madison County, Illinois, United States, about 18 miles (29 km) north of St. Louis, Missouri. Its population was 25,676 at the 2020 census. It is a part of the River Bend area in the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. It is well known for its limestone bluffs along the river north of the city, and it is the former location of an historical state penitentiary and played a significant role preceding and during the American Civil War. It was the site of the last Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate in October 1858. The former state penitentiary in Alton was used during the Civil War to hold up to 12,000 Con…
From Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · facts via Wikidata (CC0)
How Alton ranks
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Housing in Alton
The median sale price was $153,000 in May 2026.
A seller's market
Safety in Alton
Safety Grade D
Alton reports more crime per resident than most U.S. towns we grade: about 95% report less.
Health in Alton
Health Grade D
Healthier than 13% of U.S. towns on seven CDC estimates.
Compared with Illinois
of 32 measures CDC estimates. The other 12 are too close to call.
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Famous people from Alton
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Where Alton is
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