Great River Road, Alton to Grafton

The Alton to Grafton stretch of the Great River Road, 15 miles of four-lane highway between the Mississippi and wooded limestone bluffs, past the Piasa Bird mural and the stone village of Elsah to the Illinois River confluence.

IL 100 starts at US 67 in downtown Alton, where Broadway, Landmarks and Piasa Streets meet, and heads upriver past the limestone quarry to the Piasa Bird, a reproduction of the Illini’s legendary man-eating creature painted on the bluff above a car park. From there it runs as a four-lane highway between the Mississippi and wooded limestone bluffs, partly on an old railroad alignment, with a bike trail alongside and gentle sweeping curves rather than twists. Eleven miles out, a short turn inland leads to Elsah, founded in 1853 with houses of local stone and listed in full on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The road then passes Chautauqua and comes over a rise into Grafton, where the Illinois River meets the Mississippi and a ferry crosses to Missouri. Bald eagles winter along the bluffs from late December to the start of March, and autumn weekends bring the heaviest traffic of the year.