Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near East Cullom Cullom, IL

Cullom is a village in eastern Livingston County, Illinois, situated about 20 miles east of Pontiac, the county seat, and just one mile west of the Ford County line.

Cullom owes its beginning to the Illinois Central Railroad, which reached the site in 1878; farmer Frederick Hack granted the railroad a 90-foot right of way across his farm, paid it a $4,000 cash bonus, donated forty acres, and platted the village himself.

The village was named for Shelby Moore Cullom, the 17th governor of Illinois — a compromise, since Hack wanted the town called Jeffrey after the railroad's roadmaster, while Jeffrey wanted it called Hack, and each man declined the other's honor.

Governor Cullom, on hearing of the naming, sent $25 to be given to whichever denomination built the first church in the village; the Methodists won the prize and built Cullom's first church in 1880.

A post office has operated in Cullom since 1878, and the village was incorporated on October 17, 1901.

The 2020 census counted 520 people in Cullom; in 2000 the village had 563 people in 248 households, packed into just 0.34 square miles along Illinois Route 116.

Cullom is the only incorporated community located within Sullivan Township.

Cullom is the birthplace of Arnold Orville Beckman (1900–2004), the chemist and inventor of the pH meter who founded Beckman Instruments and lived to the age of 104.

Cullom students today attend Tri-Point schools; the old Cullom Community High School, home of the Ramblers, closed in the 1968 merger that created the Tri-Point district.

In 2002, American Legion Skinner-Trost Post 122 dedicated a monument to local veterans, living and dead, at West Lawn Cemetery on West Jackson Street in Cullom.