Web Design in Oakland Township, MI

Oakland Township, Oakland County

Well-Known Places in Oakland Township

Paint Creek Trail, Cranberry Lake Farm Historic District, Bear Creek Nature Park.

Oakland Township Business Districts

• Goodison

About Oakland Township, Oakland County

The Charter Township of Oakland is a charter township on the north Oakland County edge of Metro Detroit, colloquially called Oakland Township, with a 2020 census population of 20,067. It covers 36.7 square miles, of which 36.3 is land and 0.4 water, sits at 938 feet (286 m), and is bordered by Addison Township to the north, Orion Township to the west, Rochester Hills to the south, and Washington Township in Macomb County to the east.

History of Oakland Township

• Oakland Township is one of Michigan's oldest townships and was first named in surveys drawn to the guidelines of the Land Ordinance of 1785. A United States General Land Office opened in 1818 and brought the first permanent settlers, and the township was one of the original 25 in the Territory of Michigan when counties were subdivided in 1827; its boundaries and 36-square-mile area were finalised in 1837 when Michigan gained statehood. The township's original settlement, called Oakland and also known as Kline Settlement and Alert, stood at Stoney Creek and Rochester Roads, dating from 1822 when its post office was built; it held two churches and a school house, was renamed Alert in 1894, lost its post office in 1902 and is now a ghost town with only a graveyard remaining, having been bypassed when the Michigan Central Railway established Goodison Station. A grist mill and mill race were built on Paint Creek in 1835, later named Goodison Mill after William Goodison and the family who ran it after emigrating from England, and it worked for more than a century before being dismantled in the late 1940s; the site is now the Paint Creek Cider Mill. Goodison Station was a flag station built in 1872 on the Detroit and Bay City Railroad, with a second branch serving the Detroit United Railway, and a Goodison post office began in 1874; passenger service on the lines had ended by 1950.

Landmarks and Places in Oakland Township

• Paint Creek Trail - Michigan's first rail trail, opened 1983 in the former Detroit and Bay City, Michigan Central and Penn Central right-of-way, linking Lake Orion village to the city of Rochester through Goodison.
• Paint Creek Cider Mill - occupies the former site of the 1835 grist mill and mill race later known as Goodison Mill, which operated more than 100 years before being dismantled in the late 1940s.
• Goodison - unincorporated community at Collins, Territorial/Orion and Gallagher/Tower Roads, elevation 840 ft (256 m), named for William Goodison and his family, with a post office from 1874 and a station on the Michigan Central Railroad.

The Oakland Township Economy

• The published record describes Oakland Township as a low-density residential bedroom community rather than a commercial or industrial centre, with local ordinances, zoning and a master plan directed at limiting commercial and industrial development and holding down population density. Its historic economy ran on milling and rail freight: the Paint Creek grist mill of 1835, later Goodison Mill, operated for more than a hundred years, and Goodison Station on the Detroit and Bay City Railroad connected the township to the Bay City to Detroit corridor. One stated objective of the township master plan is to establish Goodison as a central gathering place, and officials have sought to restore water to the water wheel at the old mill site and to draw small retail businesses to the area.

Community Life in Oakland Township

• The township's cultural life is organised around Paint Creek and the corridor the railway left behind. The Paint Creek Trail opened in 1983 as the first rail trail in Michigan, running in the right-of-way of the former Detroit and Bay City, Michigan Central and Penn Central lines and linking the village of Lake Orion with the city of Rochester by way of Goodison; the original track stayed in service until it was lifted after Conrail took over Penn Central operations in 1976, and the right-of-way was bought by a trail commission representing local governments in 1983. The Paint Creek Methodist Church, moved from the vanished settlement of Oakland to Goodison sometime in the 1870s, is the last standing building of the township's first town. Addresses in the township are recognised under four different city names, Oakland, Goodison, Rochester and Rochester Hills, so residents of one township routinely give four different place names for where they live.

Local reference: en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org