Bad luck befalls Yates Mill again

It's deja rue at Yates Mill.

Tropical Storm Alberto's deluge damaged Wake County's hard-luck historic site less than a month after its celebrated reopening.

The old mill, about five miles south of downtown Raleigh off Lake Wheeler Road, took a beating Wednesday when its pond on Steep Hill Creek overflowed.

Once more, steep hills, a creek and a big storm proved perilous.

Much of the mill yard between the 250-year-old mill and its visitor center washed away, the water wheel that powers the mill was dislodged, and its support column was all but obliterated.

Again.

Hurricane Fran's torrential rains 10 years ago wrecked the mill and blew out its stone dam.

After a decade of restoration and improvement, "the mill that bypassed progress," as The News & Observer called it in 1957, reopened to the public May 20 as a county park with a visitor center, university research facilities, a wildlife refuge and hiking trails.

The dam survived this time, thanks to an emergency spillway added during its reconstruction.

But the water that overtopped the dam and poured down the spillway took a great deal of earth and stone with it.

Yates Mill's water wheel was mostly submerged, and water surrounded the mill for several hours during the storm's height.

The mill will be repaired, county officials said, but corn-grinding demonstrations scheduled for this weekend are canceled.

"The mill yard is closed to the public and probably will be for at least the next week," Park Manager Rebeccah Cope said. "We've got some repair work to do before we can run the mill."

The park, however, remains open. Its managers plan this weekend to show video of the mill during Alberto's pummeling and to discuss the effects on the mill of past storms and hurricanes.

Even amid its renewed suffering, the mill educates.