PONTARLIER, a frontier town of France, in the department of Doubs, stands on the river Doubs, at the foot of one of the chains of the Jura, and at the entrance of a mountain pass leading into Switzerland, 35 miles S.E. of Besançon. It has much of the appearance of a Swiss town, with its neatly-built houses arranged in broad straight streets. Its town-hall, college, market-house, and cavalry barracks, are its chief buildings. There are here large iron foundries and furnaces, a copper foundry, a brewery, saw-mills, and tan-yards; besides manufactories of scythes and other implements. Some trade is carried on in horses, cattle, marble, timber, clock-work, essence of wormwood, paper, &c. Pop. (1856) 4783.