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Situated on the Clinton River, the City of Pontiac, Michigan is a northern suburb of the Detroit Metro Region and the seat of Oakland County.

Pontiac is adjacent to Auburn Hills, Lake Angelus, Sylvan Lake, Bloomfield Township, and Waterford Township. Other cities and villages within twenty miles of Pontiac include Keego Harbor, Bloomfield Hills, Orchard Lake, Birmingham, Rochester Hills, Beverly Hills, Bingham Farms, Clarkston, Rochester, Franklin, Berkley, Lake Orion, Troy, Lathrup, Farmington Hills, Walled Lake, Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, Southfield, Utica, Pleasant Ridge, Clawson, Farmington, Wixom, Sterling Heights, Oxford, Madison Heights, Milford, Livonia, and Hazel Park.

The chief routes to and from the city include M-59, Woodward Avenue (Bus Loop I-75), Telegraph Road (US-24), Telegraph Road (US-24), and Orchard Lake Road, although I-75 runs north-south just east of the city limits, and then turns west just north of the city.

Pontiac's transportation network is primarily vehicular, and primarily made up of streets and roads that have been developed in a loose radial pattern, centered on the terminus of Woodward Avenue (M-1) and the Veerans Memorial Freeway (M-59),

Public transit is provided by the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART), which provides fixed route transit in Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne counties. Rail service is provided by AMTRAK, which has a station at the Pontiac Transportation Center on Woodward Avenue. AMTRAK connects Pontiac with Chicago through its Wolverine line, offering three daily departures and arrivals.

By land area, single-family residential use makes up just over twenty percent of the city, but seventy percent of the land parcels within the city are single-family residential. Very few homes in Pontiac are on lots larger than one acre. The city does not have a lot of multiple-family housing, as only about four percent of the total land area is taken up by apartments, attached single-family buildings, and townhomes.

Pontiac has nine community parks, providing access to twelve ball fields, sixteen basketball hoops, two tennis courts, four volleyball courts, and four picnic shelters, with four parks including access for fishing. Besides the river, Pontiac has several small lakes and ponds. Additionally, there are nine neighborhood parks and eleven mini-parks in Pontiac.

Pontiac was founded in the fall of 1818 by a group of Detroit investors who formed the Pontiac Company, and included Orison Allen, Shubael Conant, Archibald Darragh, William Lester, Colonel Stephen Mack, Alexander Macomb, Solomon Sibley, Major Joseph Todd, Andrew Whitney, and Austin Wing, with Colonel Mack as the manager.

The Pontiac Company assessed the town's location, acquired land, and named the town in a period of five days. Pontiac was named for Ottawa Chief Pontiac, whose people had occupied the area before its European-American settlement.

In early January of 1819, Oakland County was formed, and Pontiac was named the county seat later that month by proclamation of Governor Lewis Cass, serving the Michigan Territory. A post office was established in Pontiac on May 1, 1822, with Olmstead Chamberlin as postmaster.

The completion of the Erie Canal in October of 1825 provided a waterway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes, greatly easing the task of settling Michigan.

Pontiac was incorporated as a village in 1837, the same year that Michigan became a state, and became a city in 1861.

By the 1840s, Pontiac was the largest inland town in the region. It had a road network that reached in all four directions. Additionally, the Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad established a depot in Pontiac along its line from Detroit to Grand Haven, and a number of branch lines headed to Jackson, Caseville, and Richmond terminated in Pontiac.

Like many Michigan towns, mills were an important part of Pontiac's early economy. Early on, the community had a sawmill, a flour mill, a blacksmith shop, wagon maker, and other trades.

Except for a 7.4% decrease in 1880, Pontiac's population increased steadily until 1970, when it enjoyed a peak population of 85,279, which was followed by four decades of decline, ending in 2020 when its population increased to 61,606, an increase of 3.5%.

In the early 1900s, the General Motors Corporation opened an auto manufacturing plant in Pontiac, where it manufactured its line of Pontiac cars, a brand that was named for the city, but discontinued in 2010. The city was also home to the Oakland Motor Car Company, which GMC acquired in 1909. GMC currently operates a metal center and redistribution center in the city.

The city was home to the Detroit Lions. They played their home games in the Pontiac Silverdome from 1975 to 2001 when the team returned to Ford Field in downtown Detroit. The stadium was used for concerts and other events until 2018.

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