West Alton, Missouri

The Bellefontaine Bridge is a four-span truss railroad bridge over the Missouri River between St. Charles County, Missouri, and St. Louis County, Missouri. It has four 440-foot (130 m) spans. Construction started on July 4, 1892, and the bridge opened on December 27, 1893.The bridge was built by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and is now owned and operated by BNSF Railway. New Jersey Steel and Iron Company of Trenton, New Jersey, served as the contractor for the original construction, and George S. Morison designed the structure. Notably, the bridge was one of the first to use a Baltimore truss design; the nearby Merchants Bridge (also designed by Morison) used a Pennsylvania through truss design and had opened just a few years prior. The truss spans are found on masonry piers, which were constructed atop caissons founded into bedrock below the river.The structure is the last railroad structure over the Missouri River before its confluence with the Mississippi River.

Coldwater Creek (also Cold Water Creek) is a 19-mile tributary of the Missouri River in north St. Louis County in the U.S. state of Missouri. It is known to be contaminated with radioactive wastes.

The Alton Gas & Electric Power House is a former hydroelectric power plant at 700 W. Broadway in Alton, Illinois.

The Piasa ( PY-ə-saw) or Piasa Bird is a creature from Native American mythology depicted in one of two murals painted by Native Americans on cliffsides above the Mississippi River. Its original location was at the end of a chain of limestone bluffs in Madison County, Illinois, at present-day Alton, Illinois. The original Piasa illustration no longer exists; a newer 20th-century version, based partly on 19th-century sketches and lithographs, has been placed on a bluff in Alton, Illinois, several hundred yards upstream from its origin. The limestone rock quality is unsuited for holding an image, and the painting must be regularly restored. The original site of the painting was on lithographic limestone, which was quarried away in the late 1870s by the Mississippi Lime Company.

Fort Belle Fontaine (formerly known as Cantonment Belle Fontaine) is a former U.S. military base located in St. Louis County, Missouri, across the Mississippi and Missouri rivers from Alton, Illinois. The fort was the first U.S. military installation west of the Mississippi, in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, and served as a starting point for many expeditions to the American West.

The Alton Military Prison was a prison located in Alton, Illinois, built in 1833 as the first state penitentiary in Illinois and closed in 1857. During the American Civil War, the prison was reopened in 1862 to accommodate the growing population of Confederate prisoners of war and ceased to be prison at the end of the war in 1865. The prison building was demolished not long after the Civil War. All that remains of the former prison site is a section of ruin wall that is maintained by the State of Illinois as an historic site. The prison site is included in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

The Christian Hill Historic District is a historic district and neighborhood in Alton, Illinois. The district is located west of Alton's central business district on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. A primarily residential area, the district includes 274 buildings, of which 266 are contributing buildings to its historic character. Development in the district began in the 1830s; in addition to residential development, the Illinois State Prison was constructed in the neighborhood in 1833. While Alton's economy declined during the Panic of 1837, development in the district continued through the early 20th century, and Christian Hill became a desirable neighborhood for Alton residents. The hill acquired its name from, Saints Peter and Paul Church, a Catholic church built in the 1850s which was the cathedral of the Diocese of Alton until the diocese moved to Springfield.The historic district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 1978.

The Fort Belle Fontaine County Park is a unit of the park system of St. Louis County, Missouri. 305.6 acres in size, it is bordered by the Missouri River, by Cold Water Creek, and by the Missouri Hills campus of the Missouri Division of Youth Services (M-DYS).The park contains part of the site of Fort Bellefontaine, a fortified post of the United States Army first raised in 1805. The post was visited by Lewis and Clark Expedition upon their return to St. Louis in September 1806. It remained in active service, in two adjacent locations, until 1826. None of the fort remains today. As of 2014, historic markers and signage educated visitors about the vanished post.The fort's location was built up in the 1930s as a parkland development project of the Works Progress Administration. Some WPA facilities remained in use in 2014, and others had evolved into picturesque ruined structures. A three-mile-long nature trail provides access to the creek ravine, WPA masonry, and the site of the vanished fort and trading post. Part of the parkland has been set aside as a reproduction tallgrass prairie, sown with big bluestem grasses and allied species. In the creekbed woods and adjacent uplands can be found the basswood, the burr oak, the chinquapin oak, and other mature-growth species of trees.The park shares a common boundary and entry point with the M-DYS juvenile detention center, and as of 2014 visitors to the park were asked to stop and sign in at a security checkpoint.

The Alton Bridge was a railroad bridge that carried the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (later Burlington Northern) across the Mississippi River between West Alton, Missouri, and Alton, Illinois. It was located 100 yards (91 m) upriver from, and parallel to, the Old Clark Bridge. The bridge was built between 1892 and 1894 and was removed shortly after the line was abandoned in 1988. With a total length of 2,060 feet (630 m), it consisted of eight through-truss segments—six Pratt trusses, one Pennsylvania truss, and one pivot-swinging truss.

The Alton Chapter House is a historic building located at 509 Beacon St. in Alton, Illinois. The building was constructed between 1909 and 1910 as a meetinghouse for Alton's chapter of the American Woman's League. The American Woman's League was a political and social organization founded by magazine publisher Edward Gardner Lewis in 1908. The organization was created to promote feminist causes, particularly the women's suffrage movement; Lewis also intended for the organization to promote and sell his women's magazines. Lewis commissioned the St. Louis architectural firm of Helfensteller, Hirsch & Watson to design five classes of buildings which the League would use as meetinghouses. The Alton Chapter House is an example of a Class II building, which was designed for clubs with 60 to 100 members. The building was designed in the Prairie School style and cost $2,500. After the club disbanded, the building was converted to a private home.The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 28, 1980. It is one of nine American Woman's League chapter houses on the National Register in Illinois.

Ellis Island is an island in the Mississippi River. The island is entirely within St. Charles County, Missouri.The namesake of Ellis Island is unknown.

The Hotel Stratford is a historic hotel located at 229 Market St. in Alton, Illinois. The hotel, originally known as the Illini Hotel, opened in 1909. St. Louis architectural firm Barnett, Haynes & Barnett designed the hotel in the Classical Revival style. The five-story brick building features brick quoins, limestone bands and window sills, terra cotta ornamentation, and a cantilevered cornice. The hotel opened a rooftop garden in 1910 and a reception room in 1912, and it became one of many hotels which drew conventions to Alton; a contemporary newspaper account described the building as part of the "greatest improvement in property in the city of Alton". In 1925, new owner E. J. Lockyer renamed the hotel to its current name. The hotel is the only hotel built in Alton before 1950 that is still in operation.The hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 27, 2000.