Aaron Webster's Mills (Auburn settlement)

The story

In 1821, Aaron Webster became the first settler at what is today the corner of Auburn Road and Squirrel Road, building a sawmill and a grist mill on the Clinton River. He named the place "Auburn" after Auburn, New York. The mills did exactly what frontier mills were supposed to do -- they pulled people in. By the time the streets were formally laid out in 1826, Auburn had the bones of a real village.

For roughly four decades, Auburn genuinely rivaled neighboring Pontiac. Then, sometime in the 1860s, the momentum slipped away and the village lost its prosperity. The settlement carried on under a series of new names: it was renamed "Amy" in 1880, and officially became "Auburn Heights" in 1919.

The modern city is a different animal entirely. Pontiac Township and Auburn Heights merged in 1983 to incorporate as the City of Auburn Hills. Today the same ground around Webster's old millrace anchors the North American headquarters of Stellantis, the main campus of Oakland University, and Great Lakes Crossing Outlets.

What's There Now

A busy commercial intersection in downtown Auburn Hills; the original Webster mill structures are long gone, but the Clinton River still runs through.

Everything that was here

• 1821–present

  Aaron Webster's Mills (Auburn settlement)Other

  Before the Stellantis towers and the outlet mall, this corner was a dam, a millpond, and one man's bet that the Clinton River could turn a wheel.

  See the map in 1822 →

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Nearby history