In 1863, William and Caroline Yates moved from New York to Michigan, purchased 80 acres, and used an existing dam on the Clinton River to open a water-powered lumber mill that soon expanded to include a grist mill. By 1876, their cider press was offering fruit pressing services to local farmers, and in the late 1870s the Detroit and Bay City Railway, which ran in front of the mill, made Yates Station a busy freight and passenger stop. In 1894, Yates built a larger mill beside the original building to accommodate the area's growing agricultural production, and the new mill contained a 26-inch-wide water-driven turbine purchased from James Leffel and Company of Springfield, Ohio. The Yates family continued grinding grain and pressing fruit for local farmers as operations passed from William to his son Frank and then to Frank's son Harry. When Harry installed a new cider press in 1924, Avon Township had begun to grow. Charles and Ruth Posey moved next door to the mill in 1939, and their Posey's Isle shop offered donuts to visitors. A 1948 newspaper reported customers arriving with their own glasses, jars, jugs, and kegs. By 1959, when Harry Yates retired, the part of the township that became Rochester Hills in 1984 was a major urban center. The Posey family bought the mill, refurbished the water power system, added the outside decorative water wheel, expanded the building, and later generations rebuilt the nearby Clinton River dam. As of 2016, the 1894 building and turbine were still being used to press cider.