The Paint Creek Cider Mill at 4480 Orion Road in Goodison has a water wheel, a year-round café, and a parking lot that fills up on fall weekends. Most people who stop there assume it is a private business that happens to sit on the trail. It is not. In 2005, Raymond and Mary Nicholson donated the historic mill complex to Oakland Township, which has operated it through the Parks and Recreation Commission ever since. The township chose to preserve a 19th-century gristmill as a public gathering place rather than allow the property to redevelop. That decision — quiet, made two decades ago — explains more about what Oakland Township's outdoor scene actually is than any trail map does.
The Village of Goodison Is the Hub, Not a Stop
The hamlet of Goodison sits at roughly mile 5 on the Paint Creek Trail, the 8.9-mile rail-to-trail that was the first of its kind in Michigan when it opened in 1983. At that mile marker, the trail passes within a quarter mile of two cider mills: the municipally owned Paint Creek Cider Mill to the south and Goodison Cider Mill — the red-and-white building next to Baldwin Elementary School at 4295 Orion Road — to the north. Goodison Cider Mill has been hand-pressing cider and selling its world-famous Pistachio Nut Bread to people who drive in from across the region every fall. Both mills sit on Orion Road within a few hundred yards of each other.
The reason residents tend to treat these as separate destinations is that most people arrive by car. The trail runs directly between them. The Gallagher Road trailhead at mile 5 is the practical access point — parking, a restroom, and a connection to both mills on foot or bike. If you have been driving to Goodison Cider Mill in October and then driving to the Paint Creek Cider Mill on a separate visit, you have been manufacturing a logistics problem the trail was built to eliminate.
What the Trail Actually Connects
The Paint Creek Trail is 8 feet wide, surfaced in all-weather crushed limestone, open year-round from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and crosses Paint Creek 12 times across its length. It runs north from Rochester Municipal Park through Rochester Hills, Oakland Township, and Orion Township to the Village of Lake Orion. Along the way it passes the 16-acre Dinosaur Hill Nature Preserve near Tienken Road and connects at its southern end to the Rochester River Walk, which links to the Clinton River Trail, which reaches the Macomb Orchard Trail two miles east. The northern sections — through Oakland Township and into Orion Township — are where the trail opens up into field, marsh, and light woods. Deer, horses in the neighboring fields, and raptors are common sightings in the warmer months.
One current note: the trail is closed to all pedestrians and cyclists south of Tienken Road while the City of Rochester performs bridge crossing work, with heavy truck traffic on that segment through the spring. The Oakland Township and Orion Township sections — including the Goodison area — remain open. If you are planning a ride north from Rochester Municipal Park in the next few weeks, add time for a road detour at Tienken.
Stony Creek Metropark: More Than the Lake Loop
Stony Creek Metropark covers 4,461 acres split primarily across Oakland Township and Washington Township, with Stony Creek Lake — a 500-acre reservoir — at its center. The park connects to the Paint Creek Trail via a path near the south entrance at the park office. Most residents know the 6.2-mile paved hike-bike trail circling the lake. Fewer use the 14-plus miles of dirt single-track mountain biking trails on the southwest side, maintained with help from the Michigan Mountain Bike Association. Trailforks currently shows a minor status issue for the system, with 13 of 57 trails marked amber — worth checking before heading out on two wheels this month.
The park also carries a disc golf course called Buckhorn with two 18-hole championship layouts through wetlands and tallgrass prairie, a golf course at 6,928 yards par-72, two swimming beaches, camping with rustic sites, and a Nature Center with interpreter-led programming, live native animals, and self-guided trails through wetland, hardwood forest, and restored prairie. The Nature Center makes sensory-friendly backpacks available at the front desk — noise-canceling headphones, communication cards, fidget tools — a detail that does not show up in the park brochure but circulates steadily among parents with sensory-sensitive kids.
In 2026, Stony Creek is the host site for MammothMarch Michigan, a 20-mile hike-in-8-hours endurance event that draws participants from across the region into the park's woodlands, wetlands, and prairie. An Earth Day cleanup at Stony Creek is also on the Huron-Clinton Metroparks calendar for April.
The Cultural Anchor at the Southern End
The Paint Creek Center for the Arts in Rochester anchors the southern trailhead at Rochester Municipal Park with a gallery, an art market, and year-round classes and workshops. PCCA runs the Art & Apples Festival each fall at the park, timed precisely when the cider mills are at peak season — which means a September weekend can run from Goodison Cider Mill south on the trail to the festival without a car changing hands. The organization expanded its board in March 2026, adding Mark Albrecht as a new director, a routine governance step that signals continued programming investment rather than retrenchment.
What the Pattern Tells You
Oakland Township has a reputation built on large lots, custom homes, and preserved acreage. The preserved acreage does not stay preserved by accident. The township has been making active choices to hold public land as public land — the Paint Creek Cider Mill donation in 2005 is the plainest example of it. A family-owned property with real estate value on a busy Orion Road parcel adjacent to a popular trail became a park. The Paint Creek Trail itself is managed by a multi-municipality commission with representatives from Rochester, Rochester Hills, Oakland Township, and Orion Township holding monthly public meetings. Stony Creek Metropark, part of the Huron-Clinton Metroparks system, draws over 7.3 million visitors annually across all 13 parks.
The connected outdoor infrastructure in Oakland Township is not a product of geography alone. It reflects sustained institutional decisions to keep it connected. Residents who have been using pieces of it in isolation — the trail on weekday mornings, the cider mills in October, the lake loop a few times each summer — are using a fraction of what is available when those pieces are treated as a single linked system.
If you are weighing what your Oakland Township property is worth in the current market, the Zibkowski Team has been working Macomb and Oakland Counties for decades. Reach out for a free home valuation and find out where your home stands today.
