Braceville, IL

Braceville is a Grundy County village with a small portion extending into Will County, on the old Route 66 and railroad corridors in northeastern Illinois. The 2020 census counted 724 residents. Braceville School District 75 and Gardner-South Wilmington High School serve the Grundy County section, while the Will County section falls in Reed-Custer Community Unit School District 255U. Route 53, county roads, and the nearby Interstate 55 corridor connect the village with Morris, Braidwood, and the wider Chicago-to-central-Illinois network.

The settlement began as Sulphur Springs and took shape around the coal, rail, and farm economy. For much of the twentieth century, Route 66 crossed the village near a railroad line and creek, using a bowstring arch bridge south of Braceville; old alignments still give the place a roadside history. The village's schools, roads, volunteer services, and small businesses now carry the everyday work that mining and rail once organized. Braceville is a two-county-edge community whose local story sits in the old bridge, the coal seams, the railroad, and the highway travelers once called Route 66.