Homes for sale in
Countryside.

The land that became Countryside was originally inhabited by the Potawatomi and later by early American pioneers in the early 19th century, with settler Joseph Vial and his family among the first non-native residents to arrive in 1833. The area stayed rural farmland until the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 pushed thousands of city dwellers into the western suburbs, where land sold for as little as $2 an acre. It remained a quiet farming community until the post-World War II era, when suburban growth accelerated. The first residential subdivision, LaGrange Terrace, was built in 1947, followed by the Don L. Dise and Edgewood Park subdivisions in the 1950s, and the City of Countryside was officially incorporated in 1960.

The city's identity is tied to the old Joliet Road corridor, which carried U.S. Route 66 through the area. Around 1917 the Marx Brothers family bought a chicken farm near Joliet Road and La Grange Road, though Groucho Marx later joked the brothers spent too much time at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs to keep it viable. The Route 66 roadbed running from Chicago toward Joliet was built from crushed limestone quarried about a mile east of the city, a reminder of the area's industrial and quarrying past that still shapes the surrounding McCook and Hodgkins landscape today. Countryside remains a marked stop on the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway.