Altamont: The Town Four Railroads Built

The name of this Effingham County town is said to combine altitude and mount, a nod to the slight rise in the prairie. The community formally organized on August eighth, eighteen seventy-two. Its real engine was geography: railroads converged here, making Altamont a crossroads for goods moving across south-central Illinois.

Mills and small factories found the spot useful. The city form of government arrived in nineteen oh one. Altamont today remains a compact Effingham County town of a few thousand people where the grain elevator and the water tower still dominate the skyline, a place that prospered because it was exactly in the middle of everywhere else.