Dunlap, IL

Dunlap is a Peoria County village about four and a half miles northwest of Peoria, with 1,603 residents in the 2020 census. It was established on June 12, 1871, on 40 acres owned by Alva Dunlap, whose former home site is now occupied by Prospect United Methodist Church. The Rock Island and Peoria Railroad put the new village on the map, and the old rail corridor now carries the Rock Island Trail through the area. That gives Dunlap a familiar Illinois pattern: a compact center, newer growth spreading toward the metro, and a railroad story that still survives in the landscape.

Dunlap Community Unit School District 323 is the community’s biggest shared institution, with the school campus and district life giving the village a steady center. The village itself has only a handful of businesses within its sixteen-block core, while Peoria supplies larger shopping, work, and medical trips. Timothy J. Cassidy Park adds fields, playgrounds, and open ground, and the Rock Island Trail brings cyclists and walkers through the old transportation corridor. Dunlap is close enough to feel Peoria’s growth but still reads as a separate village, held together by its school district, park spaces, railroad grid, and short main-street routine.