About the town » Carbondale, Jackson County, Illinois, United States

Carbondale is a city in Jackson County, in the state of Illinois, within the Southern Illinois region. It is located at the junction of Illinois Route 13 and U.S. Route 51, 96 miles southeast of St. Louis, Missouri, on the northern edge of the Shawnee National Forest. Carbondale is the home of the main campus of Southern Illinois University. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 25,902, and it is the state's 20th-most-populated city outside of the Chicago Metropolitan Area. In addition, the city is the most populous in Southern Illinois outside of the St. Louis Metro-East region, and the most populous city in the Carbondale-Marion-Herrin, Illinois Combined Statistical Area and the Metro Lakeland area. The CSA has 126,575 residents, the sixth-most-populous Combined statistical area in Illinois.