Alto, TX

Alto is a Cherokee County town in East Texas at the junction of U.S. 69, State Highways 21 and 294, and Farm Roads 752 and 1911. The 2020 census counted 1,027 residents. Colonel Robert Mitchell selected the town site in 1849, and the name Alto—“high”—refers to the dividing ridge between the Angelina and Neches rivers. The Old San Antonio Road passed through, helping the settlement become a stopping place with stores, a blacksmith, livery, cotton gin, and school.

Alto’s deepest history is west of town at Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, where a Caddo settlement and ceremonial center grew in the Neches River valley from about A.D. 850 to 1300. Three earthen mounds remain among the old village grounds, and the site reopened in 2024 after a tornado damaged the visitor area. Alto Independent School District serves local students, while the city’s rolling timbered country reaches between the Angelina and Neches watersheds. Alto is a town where an old road, a high ridge, and Caddo history all meet in the same Cherokee County landscape.