Drive north on Orion Road toward the cluster of buildings that make up the Village of Goodison and you'll pass a low, historic-looking structure with a state marker planted out front. The sign reads Paint Creek Cider Mill, and it's the name most people in Oakland Township grew up with, the one that shows up first when someone mentions heading out for cider and donuts this time of year. It's a legitimate landmark. It's also not where the cider gets pressed.
The building has earned its fame honestly. Its story goes back to 1835, when Needham Hemingway dug a millrace off Paint Creek and built a gristmill on this exact spot. William Goodison bought the operation in 1866 for $3,600, and when the railroad added a stop here in 1872, the little settlement took his name. The mill ground grain for the better part of a century before closing in 1941. Dale Miller bought the property in 1945 hoping to restore it, but the original structure was too far gone to save. He dismantled it in 1953, kept the hand-hewn timbers, and used them inside a new building constructed in stages between 1958 and 1968, a mid-century design by architects Giffels and Vallet with a Swiss chalet influence that still stands today. A restaurant moved into the old wheel room in 1983. The waterwheel itself was restored a decade later.
What changed is what the building does now. The Nicholson family donated the property to Oakland Township in 2005, and the Township has used the upstairs as office space ever since. The current operator took over in 2012 and runs it as a full restaurant, with soups, sandwiches, and hand-dipped ice cream rather than a working cider operation. A Michigan Historical Marker dedicated in 2019 tells the building's architectural story in detail. None of that story involves pressing apples on-site anymore.
The Barkhams Built the Real Cider Trade a Quarter Mile Away
If you want the working press, you keep driving. Goodison Cider Mill sits about a quarter mile northeast, next to Baldwin Elementary School, in a red-and-white building that's easy to miss if you're not looking for it. The site has sold fruit since the 1920s. Lloyd and Marion Blankenburg added the cider press in 1965, and they learned the craft from Harry Yates, who had just sold his own family's cider mill at Avon and Dequindre and taught the Blankenburgs how to run theirs. The Blankenburgs kept it going seasonally until 1978, when they sold to Tom and Ruth Barkham.
Here's the part that gets lost. While the Barkhams were running Goodison, they opened a second mill in 1981, a few minutes away off North Rochester Road. That's Rochester Cider Mill, and it has stayed in Barkham family hands ever since, now in its 45th year. The family sold Goodison in 1990, and after one more change of ownership, Robert Steinheiser bought it in 1991. He's run it for more than three decades, still using the same century-old cider press the Blankenburgs originally bought from Harry Yates. Steinheiser's mill is also where the township's actual claim to cider fame lives: the Pistachio Nut Bread, a recipe locals drive for and out-of-towners line up for every fall.
So the mill carrying the township's best-known name today is a Township-owned restaurant. The mill that's been pressing apples continuously, changing hands but never changing craft, sits a short walk away and traces its cider lineage through one family that also built a second, still-thriving mill down the road. That's the part worth knowing before you plan a fall Saturday here.
What Actually Happens This Fall
Both working mills are open now, and their hours differ enough that it's worth having the specifics rather than guessing:
- Goodison Cider Mill (4295 Orion Road) is open daily, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., through September and October. In November, hours shift to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Thanksgiving Eve, then Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., into December, with Christmas Eve as the final day of the season.
- Rochester Cider Mill (5125 N. Rochester Road) is open daily from Labor Day weekend through December 31, 2026, and is the spot for the giant straw pyramid and a petting farm with lambs, piglets, chickens, and a turkey.
- Paint Creek Cider Mill (4480 Orion Road) is open for lunch, dinner, and treats, with the wheel room and porch seating as its draw rather than fresh-pressed cider made in-house.
The Paint Creek Trail runs directly past both the historic building and Goodison Cider Mill, so the two sit within an easy walk of each other in the unincorporated Village of Goodison. Park near the trailhead, walk the crushed limestone path past the old millrace site, and you can hit both stops on the same afternoon: the restaurant for a sandwich on the porch, Goodison for the actual cider and a loaf of Pistachio Nut Bread to take home.
None of this is really about picking a winner. Paint Creek Cider Mill's kitchen has its own following, and the building's history is worth the stop on its own. But if the goal is fresh-pressed cider straight from the press, the geography matters more than the name on the marker suggests.
A Township That Organizes Around Small Clusters
Oakland Township doesn't have a single downtown, and the Village of Goodison is a good example of why that's not a gap so much as a pattern. The township's identity gets built in small clusters like this one: a former gristmill site, a family-run press a quarter mile off, a rail-trail stitching them together. It's the same logic that shapes how the township's restaurant scene has grown along Adams Road rather than around one main street.
If you're new to the area or you've lived here for years and just never sorted out which building is which, the short version is this: the name you know best isn't necessarily the one doing the pressing, and in a township this size, a quarter mile can be the whole story.
For more on what makes this part of Oakland County distinct, from its natural areas to its housing stock, our Oakland Township neighborhood guide is a good next stop. And whenever the conversation turns from cider mills to real estate, whether you're weighing a move here or just curious what your home might be worth, The Nelson Team is a call away and happy to talk through what a property like yours could bring on today's market.
