Alto Pass, Illinois.
Typical home $158,117 (+0.6% in a year). Carbondale-Marion, IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$304 (+58%) since Feb 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $920 +1%
- $157,196$158,117 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $2,477 +2%
- $155,640$158,117 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Alto Pass$830
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Alto Pass, IL rose 0.6% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Alto Pass, Union County, Illinois
Alto Pass is a village of 319 people in Union County. Half its households earn more than $55,556 a year and half less, against $55,728 across Union County; 7% of its people live below the poverty line. 88% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 12% are rented. Unemployment in Union County was 3.7% in August 2026, and the county had 2.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Union County work in schools and health care, then restaurants and hotels.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Alto Pass is a small village in Union County, in the hills of southern Illinois. Households here earn about what households do across the county, and nearly everyone owns the home they live in, which is far more than you would find in most places. Winters are cold, with only a modest amount of snow, summers run hot, and the year is a wet one.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with restaurants, hotels and entertainment, shops and government close behind. Across Union County, some of the largest workplaces are Choate Mental Health Center, Walmart and the Anna school district. The typical commute is a fairly long one, and a small number of people work from home.
Things to do. The countryside around Alto Pass is good for outdoor time. Giant City State Park and Trail of Tears State Forest are both protected areas a short drive away, and Union Lookout, a tourist attraction, is also close. Cedar Lake, a reservoir, is another short drive, and Little Grassy Lake is a longer one.
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- 7%below the poverty line
- 26 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What people in Union County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Union County had 5,238 jobs in 2025, 2.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 45° and lows near 25°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 69°. About 10 inches of snow and 51 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Anna Nne weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Union County
- Choate Mental Health CenterPsychiatric hospital662FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters184
- JR's CentreWorkshops for persons with disabilities161
- Anna CCSD 37School district100FTE
- Dyno Nobel Wolf LakeExplosives manufacturing99
- Chamness CareGroup homes, intellectual and developmental disability81
- Anna Jonesboro CHSD 81School district69FTE
- Kroger Louisville KMASupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores66
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 10 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 861 people in all across the county; Alto Pass has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Strong windVery high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Alto Pass’ census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Union County and the Carbondale-Marion, IL metro.
Alto Pass home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Alto Pass$158,117
- Illinois$295,943
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Alto Pass address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Alto Pass — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.