The red wheel on NC-68 is still turning. Annie Perdue still grinds corn on her regular days at the stone. The store still smells like sweet potato muffin mix and cold-pressed flour. What changed back in 2024 is the sign nobody in Oak Ridge expected to see: after sixteen years running the place, Darrell and Amy Klug listed the Old Mill of Guilford for sale, parcels and all, mill building, feed mill, tobacco barn, the dam with its water rights, and the house across the creek. Two years later, the sign is still up. As of early 2026, the property remained on the market, with the Klugs telling a Triad news crew that sales were actually climbing even as they waited for the right buyer to step forward.
If you've lived here a while, the instinct is to treat that as breaking news. It was, once, back in 2024. What it is not is new territory for this mill. It has been changing hands since before the United States existed, and every time it has, the wheel kept turning under somebody else's name within a few years.
A Handoff the Mill Has Done Before
Daniel Dillon built the first version of this operation on Beaver Creek in 1767, a small tub mill to grind grain for early Guilford County settlers. His estate sold it to Joel Sanders in 1808. Sanders moved the whole structure 500 feet downstream, and the mill you see today, sitting where he relocated it, dates to around 1818. From there, ownership moved through the Sanders family, then to R.A. Blalock in 1869, then to John M. Brittain, who bought Blalock's half interest in 1875 and consolidated the mill under one roof again. After that came the Staffords, the Johnsons, the Baynes and Lowry families, the Cudes and the Beesons, a chain of owners spanning more than a century before the mill landed with Heidi and Charlie Parnell.
The Parnells' exit was not a retirement plan. They died within five months of each other, and it fell to Heidi's brothers, Hans and Freddie, to find someone who would keep the operation running rather than let it close. That search turned up Amy and Darrell Klug in 2008, a couple with no milling background who liked the products enough to make an offer while Darrell was on a business trip in Brazil.
Counting Dillon, that puts the Klugs somewhere around the mill's ninth or tenth ownership since 1767. The 2024 listing is not a break in the pattern. It is the pattern.
What the Klugs Are Actually Selling
The Klugs aren't walking away from a struggling business. Back in 2024, their own accounting described growing interest from younger, health-conscious customers seeking whole wheat berries and stone-ground flours to grind at home, plus a jump in online orders that started during the pandemic and never fully receded. They said then that it's time for someone with new ideas and new energy to take it to the next step. By early 2026, that momentum hadn't slowed. The mill was still producing its lineup of flours, meals, and mixes, still selling well, still waiting on the right buyer rather than the first one.
What's on the market is more than the storefront most people picture from the road. It includes the mill and feed mill building, a historic tobacco barn, the dam and the water rights and lake behind it, and a separate house on the hill across the creek. The Klugs have said the goal is finding a buyer who will preserve what makes the site work as a gathering place, not just a retail operation. Historically, Darrell Klug said, it's been a gathering place, and it still is.
That distinction matters if you're trying to guess what the mill looks like a year from now. Every transition in this property's 250-plus year history has produced a new owner's name on the deed and the same wheel turning on the same creek. There's no reason baked into this one to expect otherwise, though it's worth being honest that the Klugs are still in the process of finding that buyer, and nothing has closed yet.
The Square Has Done This Before Too
Jackson Square tells a version of the same story on a shorter timeline. The building that now houses Dean's spent nearly 55 years as Jackson Square Pharmacy before it was renovated into the American restaurant serving lunch, brunch, and dinner there today. Same walls, same square, different name over the door.
A few doors down, Big Ed's Pizza has been the one fixture that hasn't turned over. It's been serving pies out of that historic Jackson Square building since 1970, and USA Today named it one of the country's 51 greatest pizza parlors back in 2013. Across town, StokeRidge Tavern has run under the same ownership since 2011, pouring from more than 50 bourbons and keeping live music going most weeks. And Oak Ridge Craft & Vine has built its own following around a patio pour list of more than 20 taps.
None of that continuity depends on who owns the mill. Oak Ridge's food and drink scene is small enough that most residents cycle through the same handful of places, and each one has weathered its own version of change, a name over a door, a building's second act, without asking the town's permission first.
The Calendar Doesn't Wait on a Deed
Heritage Day happened yesterday. The town held its annual fair at the event field off Linville Road inside Oak Ridge Town Park on Saturday, September 26, spotlighting the exhibits, period demonstrations, and the Best Beard contest that have made the day a fixture for years. It ran regardless of whose name is on the mill's for-sale listing, because Heritage Day is a town event, not a mill event, even though the mill's history is usually part of what gets celebrated.
The same goes for what already wrapped this year and what's coming next.
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Music in the Park (final 2026 date) | September 10 | Oak Ridge Town Park |
| RidgeFest | September 10 to 12 | Oak Ridge Town Park |
| Heritage Day | September 26 | Oak Ridge Town Park |
| Fall Arts & Craft Show | November 7 | Oak Ridge Town Park |
| Light Up the Night | December 5 | Oak Ridge Town Park |
Music in the Park ran six free evenings this year, April through September, drawing the kind of crowd that makes StokeRidge and the other Oak Ridge Road restaurants busier on those Saturdays. RidgeFest, put on by the Merchants of Oak Ridge, closed out the summer concert season with three nights in mid-September. Now the town's attention shifts to November, when the Purple Wagon Fall Arts & Craft Show returns to the park, and then to December, when Light Up the Night brings the tree lighting that closes the year.
Every one of those dates lives at the same address, Oak Ridge Town Park at 6231 Lisa Drive, set by the town calendar rather than by any single business. The mill can change hands nine times or nineteen and none of it touches whether the Fall Arts & Craft Show happens on the first Saturday of November.
What Actually Changes When a New Buyer Steps In
The honest answer is: not much, if the Klugs get the outcome they're hoping for. A new owner takes over the deed, the store, the grinding schedule, and the responsibility of keeping a National Register property in working order. What doesn't automatically change is the wheel itself, the creek it sits on, or the fact that people have been driving out to that porch on NC-68 for stone-ground grits since long before the current owners, or the ones before them, or the ones before that.
If you've watched this town for a while, you already know the mill has survived worse transitions than a listing. It survived British troops seizing it for grain in the weeks before the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. It survived a move 500 feet downstream. It survived two owners dying five months apart and their brothers scrambling to find someone to keep it going. A for-sale sign, however it lands, is a smaller thing than any of that.
If you're curious who ends up with the deed, or just want to keep tabs on what else changes hands around Oak Ridge as the town keeps growing, Pam Robbins Real Estate Group keeps a close eye on this corner of Guilford County and is always glad to talk through what's happening here, mill included.
