On December 4, 1982, Pontiac had the worst flood in the town's history, cresting at 19.16 feet, caused by a major storm.

A small group of people gathered at the cabin of Andrew McMillan on the banks of the Vermilion River.

[11] Illinois, like the rest of the nation, was slipping into an economic depression that would cause the next decade to be called “the hungry forties".

Within five weeks of the founding of the town, both Young brothers would be dead, and Henry Weed soon drifted away and would die of pneumonia in 1842 while working on a railroad near Binghamton, New York.

Isaac Wicher, the County Surveyor, made the initial survey of Pontiac and staked out its streets and lots.

[15] The original Town of Pontiac differed somewhat from these others because it was unusually large, with ninety-three blocks, most divided into eight lots with some left unsubdivided.

The square, where the courthouse would be built, was bounded by Washington, Madison, Main and Mill Streets.

In order to do this, he needed a name and selected “Pontiac” in honor of the Native American leader, who as far anyone knew had never set foot in the area that would be Livingston County.

Early growth was so slow that rivals decided there was a good chance they could strip the honor and the business of the county seat from Pontiac.

The proprietors of Pontiac, they argued, had not lived up to their obligations: the courthouse was unfinished and no bridge across the Vermilion had been built.

Their new suggestion for the seat of Government of Livingston County, four or five miles upstream would, they said, be more centrally located.

As a two-thirds majority failed by a small margin, Pontiac was continued to be the location of the county offices.

[20] After considerable delay, the first Courthouse, a twenty-two by thirty-foot wooden building, was finished and, in 1847, the promised bridge across the Vermilion was completed.

These men had calculated that the new Chicago and Mississippi Railroad would miss Pontiac and cross the Vermilion River at their location.

However, the Richmond speculators had not reckoned with Jesse W. Fell, who had retained a strong economic and social interest in Pontiac and had important friends among the railroad officials.

The tracks missed Richmond and passed through Pontiac, with the station located in Fell's First Addition to the town.

[25] On July 4, 1854, an exhibition train steamed into Pontiac, and a few months later regular service on the railroad, soon to be known as the Chicago and Alton, began.

In 1870, a fire destroyed $50,000 worth of buildings in downtown Pontiac and, like many Illinois towns, the town fathers, spurred on by insurance companies, created a “fire district,” a zone in the commercial part of the city where buildings had to be constructed of brick or some other fireproof material.

They settled on John C. Cochrane, known for his work on the Capitol building in Springfield and for the Richland County courthouse.

[31] Abraham Lincoln visited Pontiac in the 1840s and again in February 1855, when his train was snowbound on the nearby tracks, and he was taken by sled to spend the night at the home of Mr. John McGregor.

When local people learned in 1880 that former president Ulysses S. Grant would pass through Pontiac on his way to visit his son, they begged the general to stay over for breakfast, and a large reception committee quickly arranged a celebration.

On June 3, 1903, during his whistle stop tour through Central Illinois, Theodore Roosevelt spoke in Pontiac and unveiled the soldier's monument.

Local people called it the ‘hard road.” The new state highway passed along Ladd Street and brought traffic through the center of Pontiac.

[33] The 1891 iron truss bridge over the Vermilion proved inadequate to carry increased traffic over the river, and in 1925 it was replaced with a steel and concrete structure.

The Threshermen's Reunion started in a modest way in 1949 at Pontiac's Chautauqua Park next to the Vermilion River as a gathering of interested people who brought together a collection of old farm machinery.

[35] The first phase of construction on Interstate 55 was finished in 1966, and in the early 1970s the road, which closely followed Route 66, was brought up to improved federal standards.

Highway-oriented businesses soon clustered around these roads, at first on the north and south sides of Pontiac, and later near Exit 197, west of the old town center.

Downtown Pontiac has a collection of more than 20 murals that depict events, people and places from the history of the town.

Included in these murals is a large Route 66 shield that is a popular photo opportunity for tourists from many countries.

[45] In the 1957 B-horror film ‘’Beginning of the End’’, Pontiac is listed among cities destroyed by giant locusts.