Alton, Illinois, USA
1895 - Alton

Alton, all'ton, a handsome city and river port of Madison co., Ill., on the Mississippi River, 8 miles above the mouth of the Missouri, 25 miles above St. Louis, and 257 miles S.S.W. of Chicago. Lat. 38° 20' N. It is the south west terminus of the Chicago & Alton Railroad, and is on the Chicago, Burlington Quincy and the Springfield, Alton & St. Louis Railroads. It is situated on a high limestone bluff, which rises about 200 feet above the river, and is built on hilly or uneven ground. It contains a Roman Catholic cathedral, a high school, 15 churches, a Catholic hospital, a convent, an academy, 2 national banks, a city hall, and a public library. Two daily and 3 weekly newspapers are published here. Alton is the seat of a Catholic bishop. It has 5 large flouring-mills, a woollen-factory, a manufactory of church organs, and several glass-factories, machine-shops, brick-yards, saw-mills, planing-mills, &c., and manufactures of lime, cement, cigars, crackers, farming implements, carriages, beer, plug tobacco, &c. Here are valuable quarries of limestone. The suburb called Upper Alton (2 miles from the city hall) contains Wyman's Institute for boys, and is the seat of Shurtleff College, which was founded in 1836 and is open to both sexes. Alton is the market and shipping-point of several counties from which lime, coal, building-stone, and fruits are exported. Pop, in 1860, 6332; in 1870, 8665; in 1880, 8975; in 1890, 10,294.

Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World: A Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer Or Geographical Dictionary of the World Containing Notices of Over One Hundred and Twenty-five Thousand Places ... Joseph Thomas January 1, 1895 J.B. Lippincott

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