Pontiac Village & City 1870s
VALUATION AND TAXATION OF 1870. The total assessed valuation of the city for 1870 was $1,010,335, and the total tax levied was $31,992.60, distributed in the various wards as follows: First ward, $5507.02; second ward, $5603.45; third ward, $8475.93; fourth ward, $12,406.20; total, $31,992.60.
GUN PRESENTATION. In May, 1870, Samuel M. Leggett, of Commerce, presented a gun and carriage to the city of Pontiac, with the request that it might be placed in Oak Hill cemetery, and kept there as a monument to the soldiers and sailors buried therein. The donation was accepted and acknowledged by the council May 26.
MORTUARY. The interments in Oak Hill cemetery, for the year ending May 31, 1870, were
forty-three.
IRON BRIDGE. The fine and substantial iron bridge on Saginaw street was erected in 1871. It was constructed by the Canton Iron Bridge company, of Canton, Ohio, whose contract amounted to $3340. The total cost to the city was $4512.58. The span of the stream is some sixty feet, and the bridge covers the entire width of Saginaw street, one hundred feet.The total receipts into the treasury for the fiscal year of 1871 were $43,247.10, and the expenditures $39,448.04, leaving a balance of $3799.06.
PONTIAC IN 1877. The city of Pontiac, within its corporate limits, covers an area three by two and a half miles, or four thousand eight hundred acres, and includes a population of about four thousand. It is very finely situated on the Clinton river, which stream meanders in a very picturesque manner through the city in a general course from southwest to northeast. The surface is greatly diversified within the city limits, affording beautiful sites for private residences and abundant opportunity for lawn and landscape gardening, which have been well improved; the suburbs in all directions showing elegant mansions and well-kept grounds. The town is finely laid out in such a manner as to accommodate the topography of the location. Saginaw street, the principal business thoroughfare of the city, runs in a straight line through the business portion and is one hundred feet wide, and finely graded; and paved on the north, from the river to the court-house, with boulder-stone. The other streets are all in good condition. Huron street and Mount Clemens avenue are each the same width as Saginaw street,-one hundred feet. Four splendid graveled turnpikes lead out of the city in as many directions, connecting with all parts of the county.Within the limits the Clinton river is spanned by no less than thirteen bridges, one of which, on Saginaw street, is a very substantial iron structure erected by the Canton Iron Bridge company, of Canton, Ohio. The others are strong wooden structures. There are also three or four considerable bridges over the Pontiac creek; and the Detroit and Milwaukee railway crosses the Clinton on a wooden trestle bridge at Lawrence street. The river affords water-power, to a greater or less extent, at five different localities within the corporation, and for a stream of its size furnishes a remarkable amount of motive power.
Source: History of Oakland County, Michigan by Durant, Samuel W. Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & co., 1877.