History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests / compiled from the official records of the county, the newspapers and data of personal interviews, under the editorial supervision of Thaddeus D. Seeley.

CHAPTER II
GENERAL PHYSICAL FEATURES
SURFACE AND ELEVATIONS-IMMENSE DRIFT AND FORMATIONS BENEATH
SOIL AND CLIMATE -THE SURFACE GEOLOGY OF OAKLAND COUNTY.
Oakland is one of the extreme southeastern counties of southern
Michigan, in the third tier of counties from the Ohio boundary, and lies
northwest of Wayne county and Detroit. As it is nine hundred square
miles in area, it is among the largest of the counties in this section of
the state. Physically, it forms the water-shed between the headwaters
of the Clinton, Huron, Rouge and Shiawassee rivers, which drain into
Lake St. Clair, Detroit river, Lake Erie and Saginaw bay.
SURFACE AND ELEVATIONS
The surface of Oakland county is comparatively level, although the
land lies far enough above the numerous lakes to make the country remarkably healthful. In various sections the surface is broken by great
deposits of sand, gravel and bowlders, especially near these bodies of
water, but the highest hills and ridges are found, as a rule, in the townships which least abound in lakes. The most considerable of these elevations are located along the northeastern border of Pontiac township, in
the southwestern corner of Independence near Waterford, in the western
portions of Waterford township and in Highland township.
Bald mountain, lying partly in the northeastern portion of Pontiac
and the southeastern part of Orion is generally considered the highest
point of land in the county-that is, five hundred and twenty-nine feet
above Lake Michigan-although there is some dispute among surveyors
as to whether the highest elevation may not really be a little to the north
of that locality. The most pronounced ridge is, of course the water-shed
of the Clinton, Huron, and Shiawassee rivers, which passes through the
county diagonally, crossing the townships of Addison, Oxford, Brandon,
Independence, Springfield, White Lake, Commerce, West Bloomfield,
Novi and Lyon; spurs are thrown out into Pontiac, Groveland, Rose,
Highland and Milford. There are also collections of considerable elevations, some of them quite abrupt, in Bloomfield township.
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