Alton

We came to Alton on a whim, following the Great River Road north from St. Louis mostly because the map showed limestone bluffs and we wanted to see where the road went. What we found was a town built almost vertically into the hillside above the Mississippi, its Victorian houses climbing steep brick streets in tiers, gingerbread trim and wraparound porches facing out over the water. Lia, who has a weakness for old houses, made me stop the car three separate times on Henry Street just so she could photograph another one. Alton, it turns out, wears its nineteenth-century prosperity — built on riverboat trade and glassmaking — plainly on its sleeve.

Bald eagles on the bluffs

Alton has become one of the best places in the Midwest to watch wintering bald eagles, which gather here by the hundreds because the river below the Melvin Price Locks and Dam stays open water even when ice covers the rest of the Mississippi upstream. We weren’t there in peak winter season, but even in the shoulder months we counted a handful riding the updrafts along the bluff, and a volunteer at the riverfront visitor center told us the January count regularly tops a hundred birds in a single afternoon. Watching a bald eagle work the wind currents above a working river barge is a strange, distinctly American juxtaposition, and we stood at the overlook longer than we planned to.

The confluence and river history

A short drive north brought us to the confluence itself, where the muddy Missouri pours into the clearer Mississippi at Confluence Tower, a modern observation deck that gives a genuinely dramatic view of the two rivers running side by side before their currents finally mix. Downtown, Alton’s history runs deeper and stranger than the postcard bluffs suggest — the town was a stop on the Underground Railroad, the site of Elijah Lovejoy’s murder for publishing an abolitionist newspaper, and host to the seventh Lincoln-Douglas debate, all of which is laid out in small museums and markers around the historic district. We ended the evening with fried catfish at a riverfront restaurant, watching barges push slowly north against the current.

Getting There

Alton sits about 25 miles north of downtown St. Louis, an easy 35- to 40-minute drive up the Great River Road (Illinois Route 100) or via I-270 and Route 67. St. Louis Lambert International Airport is the nearest major hub, roughly 30 minutes away by car, making Alton an easy day trip or overnight from the city. There’s no direct rail or transit service into Alton, so a car is the practical way to explore both the historic bluff neighborhoods and the river drives north and south of town.