Custer Park, IL

Custer Park is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Will County, Illinois, on the south bank of the Kankakee River. Illinois Route 113 runs through the community, which is about 4.5 miles east-southeast of Braidwood. The river has long been the central geographic fact here. Early settlement in the area dates to 1834, while the surrounding Custer Township was organized in 1875 after being separated from Reed Township. The older county history also records Native towns along the Kankakee and describes a landscape shaped by farms, river roads, and changing transportation.

Road improvements connected Custer Park more closely with Wilmington and Kankakee, and the river brought a seasonal layer as summer homes appeared along the banks. The place remains small, but its position is easy to read: Route 113, the Kankakee, Braidwood to the west, and the open Will County countryside around them. Reed-Custer Community Unit School District 255U serves Custer Park along with nearby communities, giving the unincorporated place a continuing institutional link to the area. Custer Park is a river settlement whose history is written in township lines, roads, school ties, and the broad bend of the Kankakee.