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THE WHEEL OF YATES MILL HAS STOPPED TURNING
THE WATER WHEEL AT HISTORIC YATES MILL,
THE OLDEST STRUCTURE ON NC STATE’S CAMPUS,
IS BEING REBUILT AND THE NEW WHEEL IS SLATED TO BE INSTALLED IN THE FALL.
The old wheel at Yates Mill prior to removal
(Photo courtesy of Wake County Government)
The oldest building on NC State’s campus, and one of the oldest working gristmills in the country, is getting a long-needed upgrade. Yates Mill, named after the family of a former NC State math professor currently is without its deteriorating waterwheel, which was recently removed from the centuries-old structure on Steep Hill Creek.
A crew works inside to detach the old wheel.
(Photo courtesy of Wake County Government)
The old wheel at Yates Mill prior to removal
(Photo courtesy of Wake County Government)
The mill site, which dates to the mid-18th century, is the centerpiece of a public park operated by Wake County on land leased from the university, marking the campus’ southernmost boundary.
Once a thriving hub of information in colonial and antebellum times, the mill has seen its share of rough patches but is currently thriving in a hidden corner of Lake Wheeler Road, opposite the Howling Cow Dairy Education Center and Creamery where university-made ice cream and flour and cornmeal from the mill are sold.
Yates Mill after the old wheel was fully removed
(Photo courtesy of Wake County Government)
The Howling Cow Dairy
Education Center and Creamery
Gear drive assembly inside Mill
(Photo courtesy of Wake County Government)
According to Foster Davis, the park technician for education and an NC State graduate student pursuing a master’s in history, the park’s attendance is growing. “From my understanding, we are back to pre-COVID numbers for attendance,” Davis says, “and steadily increasing.”
The first mill structure was built around 1756 — records aren’t certain — and survived the Revolutionary War. The mill was completely renovated in 1820 and survived the Civil War — barely, if local lore is to be believed.
​
One story says Union soldiers, who were part of Gen. George Tucumseh Sherman’s mostly peaceful occupation of Wake County, set the mill on fire, an integral part of the structure’s
long-enduring murder mystery.
Yates Mill 1890
(Photo courtesy of Wake County Government)
One of its former owners, James Penny, was charged with beating a mill customer in 1863 over a $700 debt (nearly $18,000 in today’s dollars). Legend has it that the victim’s widow told Sherman’s soldiers her husband was beaten because he was a Union sympathizer. Soldiers retaliated by trying unsuccessfully to burn the mill down. Penny was acquitted in a Wake County court in 1866.
The mill was sold to the family of Phares Yates before the war ended and remained in the family’s hands until the late 1940s. At one time, it was owned by Phares Yates’ son, NC State math professor Robert E. Lee Yates, a popular instructor who joined the faculty in 1891 and taught until he retired in 1932. He was involved with the business of the mill but left all operations to miller John Daniel Lea, who ran the mill until it closed in 1955.
Robert E. Lee Yates poses with President Alexander Q. Holladay and other NC State faculty members in 1896. Left to right, front row: R.E.L. Yates, mathematics professor; W.C. Riddick, higher branches of mathematics professor; Alexander Holladay, president and history professor; W.F. Massey, silviculture, horticulture and botany professor; B. Irby, agriculture professor. Back row: D. H. Hill, Jr., English professor; Nathaniel R. Craighill, civil and mechanical engineering professor; W.A. Withers, secretary of faculty and chemistry professor; Nathan H. Barnes, physics professor. University Archives Photograph Collection.
(Historical photographs (UA023.020),
Special Collections Research Center at NC State University Libraries.)
After Professor Yates died in 1938, the mill and surrounding property went to his wife. It was purchased after World War II by philanthropist A.E. Finley, whose foundation eventually closed operations at the mill in 1955.
The Finley Foundation sold the mill to NC State in 1963, basically a throw-in to the 1,000 acres of land that became the Lake Wheeler Road Field Laboratory, which is home to animal and plant research units operated by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
As the field labs were developed in the mid-20th century, the land hosted occasional youth camps, and the mill pond was irregularly used for immersion baptisms by a local church. By the 1970s, the mill was largely abandoned and fell into disrepair.
​
​NC State leased the land for the park for a nominal annual fee.
​
​A new 12-foot waterwheel was built and donated by local volunteer Jeff Sugg in 1993. Three years later, floodwaters from Hurricane Fran destroyed the earth and stone dam that fed the mill. The pond was drained and much of the preliminary work was destroyed, setting the opening of the park back by as much as a decade.
Yates Mill in 1975
University Archives Photograph Collection.
Raleigh (N.C.) and the Triangle area (UA023.026),
Special Collections Research Center at NC State University Libraries.
The most recent waterwheel was finally put into service when the park officially opened in May 2006. It is now deteriorating, and no corn nor grain has been ground at the site since the park’s miller retired last summer.