Pontiac is a city in Livingston County, Illinois, United States. The population was 11,150 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Livingston County. The town is also the setting of the 1984 movie Grandview, U.S.A. Geography Location Pontiac is located at . According to the 2010 census, Pontiac has a total area of , of which (or 98.22%) is land and (or 1.78%) is water. Most of the land adjacent to Pontiac is farm ground. Pontiac lies on the Vermilion River. On December 4, 1982, Pontiac had the worst flood in the town's history, cresting at 19.16 feet. The most recent flooding occurred on January 9, 2008, cresting at 18.85 feet, the second worst in the town history. Climate History Slow beginnings Pontiac was laid out on 27 July 1837 by Henry Weed and brothers Lucius Young and Seth M. Young. A small group of people gathered at the cabin of Andrew McMillan on the banks of the Vermilion River. Their plan was to create a seat for the newly established county of Livingston. The town they would design was nearly the last of hundreds of new towns laid out in Illinois between 1835 and 1837. Livingston County, which had only been created five months before, as yet had almost no functioning government. Illinois, like the rest of the nation, was fast slipping into a profound depression that would soon lead the next decade to be called “the hungry forties.” Moreover, the men had been forced to guarantee a great deal in order to be granted the right to find the seat of the new county. They had agreed to donate twenty acres of land for a courthouse, another acre for a jail, and a pen for stray livestock. They had agreed to give the new county $3,000 toward erecting new buildings, to erect “a good and substantial wagon bridge" across the Vermilion River, and to build a county courthouse. None had the ready cash to support such an effort. They had simply promised to do so, and their promises were guaranteed by three others: C. H. Perry, the county's first storekeeper; James McKee, who had in interest at a mill at the new town site; and Jesse W. Fell, an Illinois legislator and Bloomington land dealer. Fell was the person who had been responsible for creating the new county. As it turned out, for the town's