Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainMass burial ground for 1,354 Confederate prisoners who died of smallpox at the Alton Military Prison during the Civil War — only one individual grave is marked
620 Rozier Street, Alton, IL 62002
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free. Open-access outdoor site. Respect the burial ground.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat cemetery grounds; street-level access from Rozier Street
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1862 · Mass burial site for 1,354 Confederate POWs who died at Alton Military Prison · Deaths primarily from 1862–1863 smallpox epidemic · 1909 monument by United Daughters of the Confederacy · Only one individual grave marked among hundreds of burials
The Alton Military Prison operated from February 1862 through July 1865 in the repurposed former Illinois state penitentiary on the city's riverfront. Among the approximately 11,000 Confederate soldiers held there, 1,354 died in custody — the majority killed by a smallpox epidemic that swept through the severely overcrowded facility in the winter of 1862–1863.
The dead from the Alton prison were transported and buried at what became the North Alton Confederate Cemetery on Rozier Street, in the northern section of the city above the downtown bluffs. Despite the large number of burials — 1,354 men — the cemetery contains only a single individually marked grave. The rest of the dead lie in unmarked plots, a reflection of the conditions under which Civil War prison deaths were processed and the low priority assigned to the proper documentation and burial of enemy prisoners.
In 1909, the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a monument at the cemetery to memorialize the prisoners buried there. The monument stands as the primary marker for the mass burial and has served as the focal point for the site's historical identity. The Madison County Historical Society has documented the prison and cemetery as part of the county's Civil War history.
A historical marker at the site, documented by the Historical Marker Database, confirms the 1,354-soldier count and the 1909 UDC monument. The cemetery is distinct from the related Confederate memorial site on Sunflower Island in the Mississippi River, where some accounts place a second burial location.
Sources
The paranormal tradition at the North Alton Confederate Cemetery carries the weight of its historical context: more than thirteen hundred men buried here, most without individual markers, killed not in battle but by disease in an overcrowded prison. The accounts that circulate around the site reflect that specific kind of loss.
Reported phenomena include apparitions described as soldiers in tattered or dirty clothing, seen moving among the markers and then disappearing. Mist or dark figures have been reported moving through the cemetery in conditions that don't account for atmospheric fog. Cold drafts have been noted in the open grounds even on still days — a report that appears across multiple visitor accounts documented in Alton ghost-tour tradition.
The site's combination of mass, unmarked burial and documented epidemic death makes it one of the more historically grounded haunted locations on the Alton circuit. The cemetery is typically included in Alton ghost-tour narratives alongside the adjacent Military Prison wall remnant on William Street.
The cemetery holds the unmarked graves of 1,354 Confederate prisoners who died — primarily from a smallpox outbreak — at the Alton Military Prison during the Civil War. A 1909 monument erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy marks the site; only one individual grave has a marker despite the hundreds buried here.
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