Welcome to Alton ...

So far, we found very little information about Alton. The little that we've found leads us believe that the community is historic.<1>

We've added Alton to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. We would especially like to find the location of Alton - knowing its coordinates, we can explore things like its relationship to neighboring communities, nearby cemeteries, etc. If you can help us with Alton, please Contact Us.

Alton was located

While we don't have the exact location of Alton , we believe that it would have been located within present day Denton County<2>.

While we don't have a date for the founding of Alton, you might consider that their post office opened in 1848.

When the people of Alton referred to themselves (known as a demonym), they are believed to have used Altonian<3>

Time Zone: The area where Alton was located is in the Central Time Zone (CST/CDT) and observes daylight saving time

Communities Also Named Alton ...

Using our Gazetteer, we found that there are two Texas communities named Alton: This one is located in Denton County and the other is located in Hidalgo County.

Beyond Texas, there are 37 communities that are also named Alton - they are located in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia (2), Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas (3), Kentucky, Louisiana (2), Maine, Michigan (2), Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Ontario (3), Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.

For more information, see our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Alton.

Adding Alton to Our Gazetteer ...

We originally found mention of Alton in the GNIS. For more information, see the Referenced GNIS Codes section on our Miscellaneous Page.

From our notes, the earliest published mention we've found for Alton was in the document titled List of Post Offices from Cameron Blevins and Richard Helbock.<4>

From that list, the Alton post office opened in 1848.

We also found Alton in the book titled Table of U.S. Post Offices in the United States (Jan. 1851).

For more details, see References and Mentions for Alton.

Off-the-Road Links ...

The official website for Denton County: www.co.denton.tx.us/

The official website for State of Texas: https://texas.gov/

Footnotes ...

<1>	We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Alton, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.
<2>	If you're interested in how the shape of Texas' counties, including Denton, have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.
<3>	A demonym is the name for a resident of a community which is usually derived from (or is related to) the name of that community. In other words, it's how the residents of Alton refer to themselves. It's important to note that there aren't any rules for taking a community's name and turning it into a demonym. A demonym is informal and while the majority of Alton may use one name, keep in mind that others may use something different.
<4>	A copy of their list with background information can be found at: https://cblevins.github.io/us-post-offices/data-biography/