Bartelso, IL

Bartelso is a Clinton County village on Illinois Route 161, four miles east of Germantown and eighteen miles west of Centralia. The 2020 census counted 635 residents. Route 161 carries the village into the county's larger road network, while Carlyle, the county seat, is eight miles northeast. Bartelso Grade School serves younger students, and Central Community High School connects local teenagers to a district formed through the consolidation of Breese and Aviston high schools. The grade school keeps a daily civic institution inside the village.

Bartelso sits in Santa Fe Township on the original site of Santa Fe, and early accounts describe a village built around farming, commerce, and a school. The surrounding Clinton County landscape remains agricultural, with the village's streets and school grounds providing a compact civic center. The Illinois Route 161 corridor makes Bartelso part of a chain of small communities between Centralia, Germantown, and Carlyle, while the grade school keeps an institution inside the village itself.