(Matt McCarthy/Daily News photo) Affixed to this light pole along Featherstone Road in Pontiac, is this sign. It is literally all that’s left from the torn-down Pontiac Silverdome.

While I was in the Lower Peninsula to cover the North Central Jets 8-player state championship game in Brighton on Jan. 16, I decided to go explore an interest of mine, one that my parents say I have had since I was a young boy — stadiums and arenas and abandoned ones.

On Jan. 17, I traveled from my hotel in Brighton with my first stop being 1200 Featherstone Road in Pontiac, the site where the fabled Pontiac Silverdome once stood. The Silverdome was imploded on Dec. 4, 2017, after being dormant for a half-dozen years and having been condemned earlier that year.

By the end of March 2018, the last free standing wall of the Silverdome was felled, leaving a 50-foot-deep hole where the stadium had been. There were 55,000 cubic yards of crushed concrete to be used as landfill material. Demolition officials stated that final filling and grading operations of the former Silverdome site were expected to be completed by the end of November 2018. …

The site is on the edge of the Pontiac and Auburn Hills city limits, along N. Opdyke Road, near Interstate 75. Featherstone Road, which appears to not have been repaved in quite sometime, is still five lanes from one side of the street to the other, with a turning lane in the middle. The area used to be very full of traffic before and after events at the Silverdome, but is now lacking improvements because the facility is gone.

The Silverdome, which opened in 1975, sat on 199 acres of land and featured a fiberglass fabric roof that was held up by air pressure. That architectural technique was the first of its kind for use in a major athletic facility.

The Detroit Lions called the Silverdome their home from 1975 to 2001, with it being the largest stadium in the NFL. The Detroit Pistons played at the Silverdome from 1978-1988, and set numerous NBA attendance records, including a regular season mark of 61,983 versus Boston on Jan. 29, 1988, which stood for over 10 years. And a playoff record at the time of 41,732 versus the L.A. Lakers, June 16, 1988, which was game 5 of the NBA Finals. …

Sticking with the topic of attendance, the largest crowd to ever gather at the Silverdome was on Sept. 18, 1987, for Mass with Pope John Paul II, with a reported attendance of 93,682.

On March 29, 1987, the World Wrestling Federation’s WrestleMania III established the record for attendance of 93,173, the largest recorded attendance for a live indoor sporting event in North America. The main attraction at that WrestleMania was the clash of the late Andre The Giant against Hulk Hogan for the WWF Heavyweight Championship. That record stood until Feb. 14, 2010, when the 2010 NBA All-Star Game broke the indoor sporting event record with an attendance of 108,713 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. …

The Silverdome has local connections to a handful of high school football teams, as well as other U.P. teams. The MHSAA state football finals were held at the Silverdome from 1976-2004. The first U.P. team to capture a state championship at the Silverdome was Forest Park in Class D in 1976. The Trojans were runners-up in Class D in state championship games played at the Silverdome in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 2000 and 2004.

In 1979 and 1980, Norway became the first high school football team in state history to capture consecutive state championships at the Silverdome. The Knights’ back-to-back championships were in Class D. Iron Mountain also captured two state championships on the Silverdome turf, in Class C in 1993 and in Division 7 in 2000. The Mountaineers were runners-up in Class CC in 1996; current IM head football coach Robin Marttila was the starting center on the ’96 Mountaineer team.

Kingsford captured the Class B state championship in 1993 at the Silverdome, and were runners-up in 1990 and 1992, also in Class B. Dickinson County Sheriff Scott Rutter was a player on the 1990 Kingsford grid team. The Flivvers, in Class BB, joined Twin City rival IM in 1996 as a runner-up.

Two other area teams were one-time state finalists at the Silverdome. North Dickinson in Class D in 1998 and West Iron County in Class C in 1977.

Other U.P. teams to capture state football championships at the Silverdome were Escanaba in 1981, Ishpeming in 1979, Munising in 1980, Lake Linden-Hubbell in 1992 and 1997, Menominee in 1998, St. Ignace in 1983 and Negaunee in 2002. LL-H head coach Ron Warner, a Norway native, and the Lakes were also runners-up in 1989, 1991, 1995 and 1996. …

Other notable sporting events that were held at the Silverdome were 1979 NBA All-Star Game, Super Bowl XVI on Jan. 24, 1982, and the 1988 and 1991 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament Midwest Regionals and NCAA Men’s Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships in 1982 and 1983. …

Also notable, in 1994 the FIFA World Cup played four first-round games at the Silverdome. A combined crowd on 283,598 people watched the first four World Cup games to ever be played indoors. A natural grass surface capable of growing inside the dome was developed and installed by a team from Michigan State University. This grass surface was laid upon wooden pallets atop the artificial turf underneath. Also, there was an ASA stock car race inside the Silverdome in 1983, won by Butch Miller. Future NASCAR star Rusty Wallace, as well as short track legend Dick Trickle were in the field. …

What I also came to find out when I got to the former site was that in September 2019, the City of Pontiac announced that Amazon was going to develop the Silverdome site into both a distribution facility and delivery center. The delivery center is open and functioning. The distribution center now being built is expected to be operational later this year. As reported by The Detroit News, the project cost was estimated at $250 million and will bring 1,500 jobs to the Pontiac area upon completion. …

There was one other abandoned site that I visited that is nearby the Silverdome, which will be shared in an upcoming column.