Half of Altamont is above SR 160 and half below as it cuts through town and this road meets with US 59 a few miles to the East.

If you were a person living in this town at its beginning you would have shared a main street or downtown consisting of a post office and a dirt road with approximately 200 citizens. During the next few years a railroad station, livery stable, blacksmith shops, the town well and a hotel were added. If you were still living here after 30 years you would have shared the horror of the fire which occurred in August of 1919 and destroyed fifteen occupied business houses in just over an hour and a half. You no longer had a drug store, an eating house or a soda fountain.