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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1910s
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The Bank of Chapel Hill opens a branch, the Bank of Carrboro
The Bank of Chapel Hill raised its capital in the summer of 1919 so it could open a bank in the mill town, and the Bank of Carrboro opened for business on a Saturday late that fall. Deposits on the first day came to more than $30,000.
- 1920s
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A man named Blackwelder opens a service station with a petting zoo east of Hillsborough
In the 1920s Blackwelder built a gas station on Highway 70 east of Hillsborough and drew in drivers with animals including deer, pigs and a black bear. The building later served as a dance hall and, in the 1950s, a soda shop.
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A wedge-shaped brick store replaces a frame general store at 111 East Main Street
The one-story building, nicknamed the Flatiron for its nearly triangular plan, took the place of a frame store that had sold general goods and then drugs. It served as Carrboro's post office in the early 1930s.
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Fire destroys Gooch's Café and a row of frame stores in Chapel Hill
An early-morning fire, thought to have started in Gooch's Café, burned five frame buildings in the business district, among them Pendergraft's grocery, Peace's barber shop and Foister's book store. Summer school students carried out the bookstore's stock, and the loss was put at $35,000.
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R. H. Marks builds Carrboro's first brick commercial building on East Main Street
R. H. Marks' Dry Goods Store, built around 1920 at 104 East Main Street, was the first brick store in Carrboro. It came through the 1924 fire that burned its frame neighbors, and the other owners on the block rebuilt in brick after its example.
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R. L. Snipes opens a general store and filling station near Cedar Grove
A general store and gas station with a stepped front gable, the R. L. Snipes Store, is built on NC 86 near Cedar Grove around 1920.
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The Booker family opens a crossroads store on Old NC 86
Around 1920 the Bookers built a small frame pyramidal cottage and, beside it, a gable-front rural store with a shed canopy over the front, near the Arthur Minnis Road junction.
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Three matching brick buildings for car sales and repair go up on South Churton Street
In the early 1920s three two-story brick buildings with matching arched Craftsman transoms replace earlier buildings at 100, 106 and 108 South Churton Street. The 1924 Sanborn map marks 108 as auto repair and 106 as built from plans, and the 1943 map shows 106 as auto sales.
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The Bank of Efland receives its state charter
The Secretary of State chartered the Bank of Efland with $25,000 in authorized capital, $10,000 of it paid in by three Efland men. The charter gave Efland its own bank.
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A neighborhood grocery is built at 425-427 West King Street
A one-story frame grocery was built around 1921 at 425-427 West King Street; the 1924 Sanborn map shows it as commercial, and by 1943 it had been made into a duplex. A small store facing South Nash Street was added at its rear after 1943.
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J. Cheshire Webb becomes president of the Eno Cotton Mills
Webb, a director of the Eno Cotton Mills since early manhood, was made president of the Hillsborough mill in 1921. He ran it until his death in 1932 and was also a director of the Rocky Mount Mills and the Bank of Orange.
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William B. Neal opens the Hill Bakery in Chapel Hill
Neal started the bakery in 1921 on the lot later taken by Strowd Motor Company. After his death Mrs. Neal ran it until 1945, and it supplied most of the town's bread for over thirty years.
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Fire destroys two store buildings in Hillsborough's business district
A fire that began behind O. J. and B. B. Forest's general store destroyed that brick store, the frame Spurgeon building next door with Tolar's grocery and Dr. J. S. Spurgeon's dental office, and a storehouse. The brick post office building stopped the fire, which did about $30,000 in damage with little insurance.
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John Sprunt Hill offers the Graves lot and $10,000 for an alumni hotel
Hill offered the Graves property across from the west entrance plus $10,000 if 1,000 to 1,500 alumni would each give $100 toward a hotel whose profits would go to the University. The investors did not come, so he built the Carolina Inn himself.
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Robert L. Strowd's two-story brick Strowd Building goes up on East Franklin Street
The Strowd Building was new and already taking tenants in January 1923, when a law fraternity moved in; by March a print shop was planned for its basement. The University Cafeteria had announced in June 1922 that it would open that fall in a larger new building.
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Dwight Ray and Seaton Lloyd open the Lloyd-Ray hardware store in Carrboro
Dwight Ray and Seaton Lloyd, both from families of the White Cross and Carrboro communities, opened their hardware and furniture store in April 1922. Over the next 37 years it became the place where Carrboro talked over town and county politics.
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The University of North Carolina Press is founded
On June 12, 1922, university librarian Louis Round Wilson, nine other faculty members and three trustees founded the University of North Carolina Press, the first university press in the South. Its first book, William C. Coker's study of water molds, appeared in 1923, and William T. Couch became director in 1932.
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Houston J. Walker and Allen H. Walker Sr. open Walker's Funeral Home in Hillsborough
Houston J. Walker and his son Allen H. Walker Sr. opened Walker's Funeral Home in Hillsborough, buying a Model T Ford and a Reo hearse. The family added branches in Chapel Hill in 1937 and Mebane in 1945.
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A two-story brick store block is built at 173-175 East Franklin Street
The two-bay, brick-veneered commercial building with corbelled brickwork is reported to date from 1923. It had been altered by 1992.
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Ellis Store and post office opens
Allen A. Ellis built a new crossroads store.
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John T. Fowler buys the Model Market at auction
After Sam Pickard died, John T. Fowler bought his Model Market at auction. Fowler's sons enlarged it after 1925, and Robert L. Fowler later moved it across the street.
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The Pope Mattress Company builds a two-story brick store on East Franklin Street
The Pope Mattress Company, mostly a furniture dealer, left Columbia Street for a large two-story brick building it had just put up on the north side of East Franklin. Berman's department store moved into it in 1926.
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John Sprunt Hill lets the building contract for the Carolina Inn
John Sprunt Hill, for the incorporators of the Carolina Club, let the contract for the Carolina Inn to H. L. Smith of Durham. The old Graves house on the site, at the west gate of the campus, was to be moved south of the inn and joined to it for use as a student boarding house.
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Sutton's Drug Store opens on Franklin Street
J. L. Sutton and J. L. Alderman, a UNC pharmacy graduate, opened the Sutton and Alderman drugstore with a soda fountain in the Strowd Building on Franklin Street, in space vacated by Jack Sparrow's shop. As Sutton's Drug Store it marked its centennial in 2023 as a downtown gathering place.
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A gas station and garage is built at 136-138 North Churton Street
A low gas station and garage, with a front-gabled canopy that sheltered the pumps, is built at 136-138 North Churton Street in 1924. A concrete-block wing was added on the south side after 1943.
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Cleveland Lindsay puts up a nine-foot-wide brick building on Carrboro's Main Street
Cleveland Lindsay of the Damascus section built a one-story brick building nine feet wide and about 50 feet deep next to J. D. Webb's store, near the depot. He would not say what it was for, and the Chapel Hill Weekly called it Carrboro's "mystery house."
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Eugene Andrews turns his West Franklin Street home into a funeral home
Andrews converted his residence into a funeral home. After his death his widow, Nellie Andrews, kept it running.
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The Carolina Inn is built
John Sprunt Hill built the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill.
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The building at 111 North Churton Street is in use as a drug store, later James Pharmacy
The yellow-brick building at 111 North Churton Street appears as a drug store on the 1924 Sanborn map. It keeps a 1940s carrara glass sign reading James Pharmacy and much of its original drug store fittings inside.
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William Courtney's Yellow House serves as Hillsborough's telephone exchange
The 1924 Sanborn map shows the old Courtney house at 141 East King Street in use as a telephone exchange.
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Henry and Matilda Guthrie's Franklin Street lot, with its moving-picture house, is advertised for foreclosure
A trustee advertised for public sale on August 16, 1924 the Franklin Street land of Henry and Matilda Guthrie, which held two houses, a building used as a moving-picture house, two stores and a garage. The Guthries had bought it from Mary McCauley Lindsay and D. McCauley and fallen behind on the note.
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Rameses, the live ram mascot, makes his debut for Carolina
Head cheerleader Vic Huggins won athletic department approval and $25 to buy a ram as a mascot. Rameses first appeared at the football game against the Virginia Military Institute, which Carolina won 3-0.
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A narrow brick store goes up at 106 East Main Street
The narrow unit at 106 East Main Street went up when the block was rebuilt in brick after the December 1924 fire; the 1983 inventory remembers it as built for the post office, though in December 1924 the burned-out post office was to move across the street into Mrs. Stone's new building. Beside it stood the R. H. Marks dry goods store, the town's first brick commercial building.
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A two-story brick store block rises in stages at 114 to 120 East Main Street
Beginning in the mid-1920s brick buildings replaced the frame stores at the east end of the block, among them the two-story row at 114 to 120 East Main Street. Samply Merritt's drug store held the east end and Gurnie H. Ray ran the Melba movie theater at 118.
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Cameron MacRae builds the MacRae building at Franklin and Henderson streets
Cameron F. MacRae, son of Robert Strange MacRae, put up the MacRae building on the northeast corner. By 1928 it held Clarence Pickard's grocery, the Jefferson-Standard insurance office and a basement barbershop.
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Fire destroys the building that housed Foister's Camera Shop
The building burned, and Robert W. Foister moved across Franklin Street, with a photo laboratory upstairs and a student supply and soda shop below. A new building on the site later held the University Cafeteria.
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Lueco Lloyd builds the brick store that houses Hearn's grocery
After the December 1924 fire that began in the Pendergraph boarding house, Lueco Lloyd put up a one-story brick building at 102 East Main Street as rental property, with T. C. Thompson as contractor. His only tenant was John Hearn, who had moved his grocery from Chapel Hill after World War I and ran what by 1983 was Carrboro's oldest business.
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The Bank of Chapel Hill buys the Peoples Bank
Chapel Hill's second bank, the Peoples Bank, ran from about 1912 under presidents Vernon Howell and J. D. Webb. The Bank of Chapel Hill bought its assets in 1925.
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J. Cheshire Webb takes options on the Hillsborough quarry farm that supplied stone for Duke
Webb showed geologist Jasper L. Stuckey the old quarry near Hillsborough that had supplied flagstones, and at the request of Duke's business manager Frank Brown he took purchase options on the quarry farm, signed January 31, 1925. The land was bought under the option for Duke University on March 31.
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Brodie S. Carr opens a grocery in a small filling-station building north of Hillsboro
Out of work after losing his timekeeper job at Eno Cotton Mills, Brodie S. Carr opened a grocery in a small frame service-station building on the northern edge of Hillsboro. It grew into Carr's Super Market.
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E. A. Brown sells his Chapel Hill furniture and hardware business to Pendergraft and McCauley
E. A. Brown sold his furniture and hardware business to Joseph W. Pendergraft, his assistant of seven years, and Thomas H. McCauley, who ran it as Pendergraft & McCauley.
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Lawyer J. Clyde Ray finishes a two-story office building with a restaurant on Churton Street
J. Clyde Ray built a two-story brick building, about $10,000 with its lot, with his law offices on one side of the ground floor and a restaurant run by Arthur Crabtree on the other. It also held six offices, a lodge room and a rest room for women shopping in town.
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Patrick L. Clayton sells his farm northwest of Hillsboro to James B. Duke's agents for $4,000
The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that Patrick L. Clayton, who had paid $200 for a 70-acre farm about a mile northwest of Hillsboro twenty years earlier, had sold it to representatives of James B. Duke for $4,000 for its building stone. Architects and builders had judged the stone suitable for the new Duke University.
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The Farmers and Merchants Bank moves into a new building on North Churton Street
The Farmers and Merchants Bank moved into a new building of granite and brick on the east side of Churton Street, between the old bank building and Mitchell's hardware store. The building cost about $5,000.
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The University buys the Chapel Hill Telephone Company
The University bought the Chapel Hill Telephone Company, reportedly for $25,000 to $30,000, to keep it from outside buyers. The exchange stayed for the time being on Henderson Street near the post office, with a later move planned to the old Strowd garage.
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Dewey Merritt opens a filling station at Rosemary Lane and Columbia Street
Dewey Merritt, a mechanic at Strowd Motor Company, went into business for himself at the end of 1925 with a filling station at the corner of Rosemary Lane and Columbia Street, built with a roof extension to shelter cars. He also offered battery, generator and starter service.
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Sam Berman moves his department store into the old Pope Mattress building
Mr. Pope sold out to his partner John P. Crowder, who held a liquidation sale and sold the building to Berman. Berman then moved his store across Franklin Street into the much larger space.
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The store bearing A. A. Kluttz's name closes
The Kluttz store shut, and Stetson D, a men's clothier, took its space. Its manager, B. Y. C. Buice, blamed too many like stores, cars and better roads drawing customers away, and credit buyers slow to pay.
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The old Methodist church on Rosemary Street becomes a garage run by Montrose Tull
The long-closed 1853 Methodist church at Rosemary and Henderson streets was converted into an automobile repair station, the Club Service Motor Co., run by Montrose Tull. A platform was built from the rear door to Henderson Street for cars.
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Bayard Wootten opens a Chapel Hill studio over Foister's store
Bayard Wootten arranged with R. W. Foister to use the upper floor of his store as a studio, making portraits there every Saturday and taking photographs in homes and outdoors. By 1928 the Wootten-Moulton Studio over Foister's was her Chapel Hill base.
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A two-story brick building goes up at 121-125 East Franklin Street
The building, called the Strowd Building in the survey text, was put up in 1927. After later damage it was rebuilt in its present form in the 1960s, with a balustraded roofline and hooded windows, and in 1992 it housed the Varsity Theatre.
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The Carolina Theatre and Jeff's Campus Confectionery open in the new Sorrell building
When W. B. Sorrell's building was finished, its first tenants were his optometry shop on the west, the Carolina Theatre in the middle and Jeff's Campus Confectionery on the east.
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The Esso company buys the Lockhart house at Churton and Tryon and moves its front half next door
About 1927 the Esso company bought the eighteenth-century Catherine Lockhart house at the northeast corner of Churton and Tryon streets. The front half was moved to the lot next door on East Tryon Street, and the corner became the site of a filling station.
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The Fitch family buys out W. T. Riggs and the business becomes Fitch Lumber Company
The Carrboro yard had opened in 1923 as a branch of the Mebane firm Fitch-Riggs Lumber Company, run by R. B. Fitch Sr. In 1927 the Fitches bought Riggs's share and renamed the company; in 1983 it was Carrboro's oldest working industry.
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Fire destroys the Everett building, a meat market on King Street
A fire that started soon after midnight destroyed R. O. Everett's two-story brick building on King Street, which held a meat market with roomers upstairs. A bucket brigade and fire trucks from Durham and Mebane kept it from spreading; the loss was put at about $5,000.
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Fire destroys Ralph Pendergraft's Chevrolet agency on West Franklin Street
The frame building of the Chevrolet dealership Pendergraft had opened at Franklin and Roberson streets burned. A small brick building went up on the site and later housed a grocery and an auto service.
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Fire destroys the Pickard Hotel on Franklin Street
A fire that started in the attic destroyed the old Pickard Hotel late on Saturday night, January 7, 1928, at a loss of about $20,000. Firemen thought they had put it out, but were called back to find the whole roof burning. The hotel, built by the Pickards, was then owned and run by Colonel Uzzell.
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The Southland Motor Company opens a Studebaker and Erskine agency on Rosemary Street
The Southland Motor Company, a Raleigh firm headed by J. F. Cooper, opened for business in the building near the fire station lately used by the Burroughs Motor Company, with Herbert Pendergraft in charge. It sold Studebaker and Erskine cars and ran a service station and repair shop.
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Eben and Ruby Merritt open a gas station on the Pittsboro Road
Eben and Ruby Merritt began running an Esso gas station on the Pittsboro Road south of Chapel Hill in 1929 and kept it for nearly fifty years. It is the business that became Merritt's Store and Grill.
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Eno Cotton Mill installs new machinery and switches to combed yarn
New machinery went in at the Eno mill in 1929, and combed yarn replaced coarse carded yarn. Broadcloth shirting and corduroy became its main products.
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George Livas and James Gust go into partnership at the Carolina Confectionary
George Livas formed a partnership with James Gust in 1929 and began operating the Carolina Confectionary as a restaurant as well; it became the Carolina Coffee Shop.
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Herbert Ledbetter and Clarence Pickard open Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery
Ledbetter, a former clerk at Alfred Williams's stationery, and Clarence "Doc" Pickard, whose grocery had failed, opened the store in part of Foister's photo shop. It did well enough to move to a larger space in 1932.
- 1930s
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A brick building that housed the post office goes up at 118 South Churton Street
A one-story beige brick commercial building is put up about 1930 at 118 South Churton Street and is labeled post office on the 1943 Sanborn map. The post office moved to a new building farther down South Churton Street in 1958.
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James M. Pritchard and Thomas P. Lloyd buy the bankrupt Patterson Brothers drugstore
The Patterson Brothers drugstore failed in 1930, and Pritchard and Lloyd bought it from Wallace Durham Patterson. The maps then list it as the Pritchard and Lloyd Rexall store.
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Johnson-Moore Hardware goes bankrupt and Orange Hardware takes its place
The hardware store that had succeeded Chapel Hill Hardware failed in 1930, one of several Franklin Street businesses lost in the Depression, and Orange Hardware took it over.
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Students boycott the Carolina Theatre over ticket prices
University students stayed away from the Carolina Theatre on Franklin Street to push the price of admission down from forty cents to thirty.
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The Mercantile Center building on North Churton Street is remodeled in the Spanish Mission style as a dime store
The two-story brick building at 121 North Churton Street, put up soon after 1911, is remodeled in the 1930s with a tiled pent roof on large brackets, apparently when it became the dime store. Its storefront dates from 1988.
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The University gives up its Service Plants appliance business to two employees
The UNC Service Plants, which supplied water, power and laundry, had begun selling electrical goods. After the state barred the University from competing with private business, Harvey D. Bennett and Frank C. Blocksidge took over the shop in the same place.
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The Bank of Efland fails and goes into receivership
Efland had its own bank for about ten years, with John L. Efland as president. In November 1930, days after a robbery in which a merchant shot the robber dead, the cashier, Roberts Riley, handed the state bank examiner the keys; the bank was found $15,000 to $40,000 short and put in receivers' hands, and Riley was jailed at Hillsboro.
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Contempo and the Intimate Bookshop begin in Chapel Hill
Milton Abernethy, Anthony Buttitta and three other young men distributed the first issue of Contempo, a four-page review of ideas and personalities, in Chapel Hill on April 27, 1931. They also ran the Intimate Bookshop from a dormitory room; by June it had moved above the Cavalier Cafeteria, and Contempo was later headquartered there.
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Richmond Motor Company opens as Hillsboro's Ford dealer
Richmond Motor Company began selling Ford cars in Hillsboro in 1932. It marked its 15th anniversary in July 1947 with a three-day open house, having sold 1,848 new and used cars.
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Robert L. Fowler moves the Model Market across Franklin Street into a new building
Fowler carried his stock to a new building on the south side over one weekend and opened there the next Monday.
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Strum's Gas Station, a Spanish Mission-style filling station, is built on South Churton Street
The stuccoed Spanish Mission-style gas station at 200 South Churton Street, with a green tile pent roof, is built in 1932 and appears as a filling station on the 1943 Sanborn map.
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Robert A. Eubanks closes his general store when he becomes postmaster
Eubanks shut his long-running general store on the south side of East Franklin when he took over the Chapel Hill post office. The building was razed in 1934.
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The Pickwick Theatre closes in the Depression
Hard times forced the Pickwick to shut. For some years the building served as a town courtroom before it reopened as the Pick in 1938.
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The Bank of Chapel Hill closes its Bank of Carrboro branch
With the Carrboro mills idle and other business falling off, the Bank of Chapel Hill closed its Carrboro branch and moved its accounts to the parent bank. The branch cashier, W. E. Thompson, went with them.
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George and Mabel Bason open Whitehall in the old MacRae house
Leaving the Widow Puckett house after George Bason resigned from the University, the couple bought the MacRae house across from the Episcopal church, which had been a fraternity house. They named it Whitehall and took boarders, sold crafts and later antiques.
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James J. Freeland moves to Hillsborough
Born in Durham in 1918, Freeland came to Hillsborough in 1934. In his early years there he operated the Sunny Side Inn, a barbecue restaurant, worked part time at a sawmill and helped run a dry cleaning plant in West Hillsborough.
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A Mission Revival Sinclair gas station is built at Churton and Corbin streets
A stuccoed Mission Revival gas station with a tiled porte-cochere is built in the late 1930s at 105 West Corbin Street, set at an angle to face the corner of North Churton and West Corbin. A large two-story addition went up behind it in 2003.
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Andrews and Lloyd sell their North Greensboro Street cedar mill site to Fitch Lumber
Dick Andrews and Brodie H. Lloyd had kept running a cedar mill on the lot after leasing buildings to Fitch in 1923. They then sold the whole industrial site, including early frame sheds built for the Thelma Knitting Mill, later Blanche Hosiery.
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Standard Oil builds a Spanish Revival service station on West Main Street
Brothers Stacy and Eric Neville ran the stuccoed station at 210 West Main Street, with its stepped pilasters and imitation tile roof, for many years. Before it was built they had worked from a frame station on the small paved triangle across the street.
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The Hill family gives the Carolina Inn to the university
John Sprunt Hill and his family gave the Carolina Inn, which he had built in 1924, to the university on the condition that its income support the North Carolina Collection.
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James M. Pritchard buys out Thomas Lloyd and becomes sole owner of the drugstore
Pritchard took sole charge of the former Patterson Brothers store, now Pritchard's Drugstore. Lloyd opened his own Carolina Pharmacy in 1940.
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Rose's 5-10-25 cent store opens on East Franklin Street
When John P. Crowder closed his variety store and left town, Rose's took his space and shared the building with the A&P.
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The Durham Bank and Trust Company buys the Bank of Orange
The Bank of Orange stayed independent until 1936, when the Durham Bank and Trust Company bought it. Its assets were about $750,000 at the sale.
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Dudley D. Carroll chairs the Orange County Building and Loan Association
Carroll was a director of the Orange County Building and Loan Association from 1920 to 1950 and chaired its board from 1937. He also chaired the county draft board and the county ABC board.
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Walker's Funeral Home opens in the enlarged Bill Lloyd house on West Franklin Street
The old "Bill Lloyd" house was enlarged and made over as Walker's Funeral Home, near the Columbia Street end of West Franklin.
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Robert Varley opens a men's clothing store on East Franklin Street
Varley's store took the space of Alfred Williams's stationery on the south side of the street.
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Edward Danziger opens Danziger's Old World Candy Shop on East Franklin Street
Edward Danziger, a Viennese confectioner who had left Austria, opened a candy shop at 153 East Franklin Street in the Sutton Building, selling homemade confections, pastries, coffee and sodas. It later grew into Danziger's Old World Restaurant and a gift shop.
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Maurice Julian opens a shoe store on East Franklin Street
Julian started out selling shoes at 167 East Franklin, in the space James R. Ellis's dress shop had left.
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The Durham Bank and Trust Company takes over the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Hillsborough
The Durham bank acquired Hillsborough's second bank, the Farmers and Merchants Bank, in 1939. From then on it ran a single Hillsborough branch.
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UNC tennis coach John Kenfield opens the Carolina Sports Shop
Kenfield started a sporting goods store on the north side of East Franklin. New owners bought him out in 1942 and made Henry Sawtelle McGinty manager.
- 1940s
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Crabtree Store No. 2 is built north of Cedar Grove
A frame country store, Crabtree Store No. 2, is built north of Cedar Grove around 1940.
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John Scott Trotter turns the old Bryan boarding house into The Hill House
Mrs. Green Bryan's heirs sold her West Franklin Street boarding house to Trotter, who renovated it and named it The Hill House, with hotel rooms and rental apartments.
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Thomas P. Lloyd opens the Carolina Pharmacy
Lloyd, once James Pritchard's partner, opened his own drugstore in the space Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery left when it moved a door east.
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Wartime orders push the Eno Cotton Mill to about 600 workers
Military demand for cloth during World War II enlarged the Eno Cotton Mill, which by the 1940s employed as many as 600 workers on three shifts.
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William D. Carmichael Jr. returns to Chapel Hill as the university's finance officer
Carmichael left a New York Stock Exchange partnership and came back in 1940 to serve the consolidated University of North Carolina as finance officer. As finance officer, comptroller and then vice-president he raised money from the legislature, foundations, corporations and individuals.
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Eben G. Merritt opens a new filling station on the Pittsboro Road
E. G. Merritt opened a new filling station on the Pittsboro Road, just above his old stand, with a tiled roof and a large parking lot. It later ran as Merritt's Service Station and store.
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Chapel Hill organizes civilian defense after Pearl Harbor
Within days of Pearl Harbor, Mayor John Foushee called for hundreds of civilian-defense volunteers, and armed sentries guarded the airport, the University Lake dam and the power plant. A control center opened at the Carolina Inn, with a branch volunteer office for Black residents at Perry's barber shop, and UNC students formed a volunteer training corps.
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A filling station is built at 212 North Churton Street
A parapet-roofed filling station with garage bays goes up at 212 North Churton Street about 1942. Around 1980 it lost its tiled pent roof, was stuccoed and enlarged, and became the John Couch Oil Company.
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Maurice Julian opens The College Shop, a men's clothing store
Julian moved into the space Durham Dairy Products had left at 140 East Franklin and opened a men's clothing store he called The College Shop.
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The Carolina Theatre is built on East Franklin Street to a Williamsburg design by Archie Davis
The new two-story brick theatre at 108 East Franklin Street, with a steep roof, dormers and brick pediments and arches, was the one building in the 100 block of East Franklin to follow the Williamsburg plan.
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The Paul Riley Store is built on Eno Street
A one-story brick store with a stepped parapet and inset entrance went up at 907 Eno Street, carrying the West End commercial style farther west. A longtime resident recalled it, with the nearby Methodist church, as a center of childhood life in West Hillsborough.
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The old Carolina Theatre is renamed The Village
With the new Carolina Theatre open on the south side of the street, the 1927 house on the north side took the name The Village.
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Wilbur Kutz opens The Varsity, a clothing store with a basement soda fountain
Kutz's clothing store on the north side of East Franklin had a soda fountain downstairs that drew a crowd.
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Rachel Crook opens a fish and produce market on West Franklin Street
Crook made an old service station, lately a chicken house, into a fish and produce market.
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A one-story brick store is built at 109 East King Street
A three-bay brick commercial building with a central entrance between large multi-light display windows was put up at 109 East King Street around 1944.
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Len Hearn buys the East Main Street building his family grocery rents
After John Hearn died his son Len ran the store as L. D. Hearn, bought the building in 1944 and extended the back three times. It became L. D. Hearn & Son in the 1950s and, under grandson James, Hearn's Grocery.
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Pritchard's drugstore on East Franklin Street closes after its owner dies
James Manning Pritchard died and his drugstore shut. Rachel Crook sold pecans in the empty store for a short while before the North Carolina Cafeteria, formerly on Fraternity Row, bought the building and moved in.
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Vic and Rebecca Huggins run Huggins Hardware on East Franklin Street
The Hugginses bought the University Hardware Company and opened Huggins Hardware on March 22, 1944, adding kitchenware and general merchandise to the keys, paint and tools. They sold the store in 1968.
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Smith Furniture Company opens on West King Street in Hillsborough
Smith Furniture Company opened in the building formerly occupied by the Scott store, selling furniture, stoves and rugs. R. J. Smith ran it as proprietor, and it was still selling G-E appliances and heaters on West King Street in the 1960s.
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James Freeland opens the Fairview Bowling Alley in Hillsborough
James Freeland opened the Fairview Bowling Alley in a building he put up himself, casting the cinder blocks and laying the concrete floor. It opened with three duckpin alleys and room for a tenpin lane.
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Nelson Callahan and Morris Timmons open the Village Printshop next to the Porthole
The Village Printshop opened at 7 Fraternity Row, next door to the Porthole, run by Nelson Callahan, who had worked at the Orange Printshop since 1928, and Morris Timmons, operator of the Porthole. It did job printing by letterpress and offset.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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A brick Colonial Revival office building is built at 115 East King Street
A one-story Flemish-bond brick office building with a slate roof and a large central display window was built at 115 East King Street around 1945.
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A row of Colonial-style stores fills the 300 and 400 blocks of West Franklin Street
As downtown pushed west after the war, an unbroken row of Williamsburg-inspired shops went up along West Franklin Street, many designed by Archie Davis.
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A. H. Poe buys Ben Strowd's Pure Oil station on West Franklin Street for his DeSoto dealership
Poe bought the Pure Oil service station from Ben Strowd and moved his DeSoto car agency into it.
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Fitch Lumber moves its Mebane business to Carrboro after the Mebane branch burns
A. B. Fitch and all of the firm's Mebane operations came to Carrboro, and the Lloyd Street plant was enlarged around the same time.
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George Livas becomes sole owner of the Carolina Coffee Shop
George Livas's partnership with James Gust ended and Livas became sole owner of the Carolina Coffee Shop, which he ran until his death in 1956.
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Johnson-Strowd-Ward opens a furniture store on West Franklin Street
The furniture firm began in one of A. H. Poe's car showrooms and in 1947 moved further west on West Franklin into a building put up for it.
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County commissioners refuse to relicense beer sales at the Log Cabin filling station
The Orange County commissioners voted unanimously to keep refusing J. A. Thompson a license to sell beer at his filling station, the Log Cabin, on the Mebane road. Thompson and his wife called it a "Dirty Deal" and their lawyer pleaded for another chance without success.
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Poe-Mangum Auto Service finishes a showroom and parts wing at its West Franklin Street station
Bill Poe and Marvin Mangum added a DeSoto-Plymouth showroom and a parts department to their Pure Oil service station, stretching the building to a 140-foot front. The Weekly called it one of the biggest building projects in town since the war.
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Milton Julian opens the Clothing Cupboard on West Franklin Street
Milton's Clothing Cupboard was among the businesses started on West Franklin in 1947 and 1948. It later moved to East Franklin, where it stayed until the mid-1990s.
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Cates's Esso station in Hillsborough is named the cleanest Esso station in North Carolina
A statewide survey by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey picked C. H. Cates's Esso station in Hillsborough as the cleanest Esso station in North Carolina, ahead of stations in Elizabeth City and Durham. The company arranged to name him on its Esso Reporter broadcast over WPTF.
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The Hickory House restaurant opens in downtown Hillsborough
E. W. Godfrey's Hickory House opened to the public at noon on a Saturday after an informal inspection the night before, and became a regular meeting place for town merchants and clubs. In May 1948 it installed air conditioning, which the paper called a first for a Hillsboro business.
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Mrs. Walter D. Toy sells her West Franklin Street home for business use
Mrs. Walter D. Toy sold the house she and her late husband had owned since the late 1890s to Margaret Davis Haywood of Durham, and the lot was to be used for business. The Weekly tied the sale to the business district's spread west along Franklin Street and noted talk of an A&P store on the site.
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Morris Telephone Company switches Hillsborough to dial telephones in a new exchange building
The Morris Telephone Company of Roxboro replaced Hillsborough's hand-crank telephones with a dial system housed in a new brick exchange on East King Street, begun in March 1947 at an estimated cost of $40,000 with equipment. The cutover was set for 4 p.m. on Monday, September 1.
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Ted Danziger names the passage to his Rathskeller Amber Alley
Danziger gave the name Amber Alley to the passageway off East Franklin Street that led down to his new Rathskeller. The Weekly said the name came from the yellow lanterns along its walls, not from the novel Forever Amber.
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Ted Danziger opens the Rathskeller in the basement of his father's candy shop
Edward Danziger's son Ted opened the Rathskeller in the basement of the Danziger candy store on Franklin Street. The Hall of Fame credits it with being the first local restaurant to serve draft beer.
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The A&P leaves East Franklin for a new store on the old Toy lot on West Franklin Street
The grocery chain moved off East Franklin into a building it put up on the former Walter Dallum Toy property, bought for the purpose in 1947. Rose's store then spread into the space the A&P had left.
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William Sloan opens Sloan's Drugstore on East Franklin Street
Sloan opened his drugstore in the store where D. Pender's grocery had been. It lasted until the mid-1970s, when Spanky's Restaurant took the space.
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Hillsboro Speedway, Inc. buys the Occoneechee Farm racetrack tract
W. S. Murchison and J. R. Rogers sold two hundred acres of the old Occoneechee Farm, including its horse track, to Hillsboro Speedway, Inc., the company Bill France and four partners had chartered to build a stock car track. France had spotted the track while flying over Orange County.
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P. L. and Lloyd M. Senter open their new drugstore building next to Lloyd-Ray Hardware
Father and son pharmacists P. L. Senter and Lloyd M. Senter held a formal opening for their new Carrboro drugstore building, with a new soda fountain, on the evening of January 27, 1948. They treated it as the store's fifteenth anniversary.
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Occoneechee Speedway opens
Occoneechee Speedway, a one-mile dirt oval that Bill France and four North Carolina partners built on the old Occoneechee Farm horse track outside Hillsborough, opened with a 100-mile NASCAR stock car race won by Fonty Flock.
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Fowler's Food Store opens its new building on West Franklin Street
Fowler's Food Store, successor to the old Model Market, held a grand opening in a new 80-by-200-foot building on West Franklin Street, with a parking lot reaching through to Rosemary Street. Robert L. Fowler of Chapel Hill and Marvin M. Fowler of Durham owned the store.
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The Whitfield and Oakley department store moves into a new building on Carrboro's Main Street as White Oaks
The Whitfield and Oakley department store moved from across the street from the Carrboro post office into a new building facing the Carrboro bank, under a new neon sign reading "White Oaks." The White Oaks Department Store advertised in local papers into the mid-1960s.
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The Carl Smith Building is completed on North Columbia Street
Carl Smith's commercial building on North Columbia Street was completed in 1949; Gooch's Cafe moved in, and the area office of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis took rooms on the second floor.
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Owner W. M. Chance puts a neon marquee on the Osbunn Theater
W. M. Chance, owner of the Osbunn Theater on West King Street, had a steel marquee 32 feet long and 8 feet wide built across its front, lit by 300 feet of neon tubing. New aluminum display cases went in across the front as well.
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Phillip Andrews opens a Gulf service station at 214 West Franklin Street
Phillip Andrews opened a Gulf service station in a new Colonial-style building at 214 West Franklin Street, next to Fowler's Food Store, with three opening days starting Thursday, July 7.
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William Muirhead opens the rental office of Glen Lennox
Muirhead named his apartment colony on the Raleigh highway Glen Lennox, after his wife's family, and opened its rental office in one of the apartments. It was to have 314 apartments in 48 one-story buildings; by March 1950, 66 families had moved in.
- 1950s
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Cole Motor Company builds a streamlined garage on US 70
The dealership's building on Cornelius Street (US 70), streamlined with rounded brick corners and glass block, is one of the most modern commercial designs of its time on Hillsborough's outskirts.
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Colonial Drugstore moves into the West Franklin store left by Milton's Clothing Cupboard
Colonial Drugstore took over the West Franklin building that Milton Julian's clothing store had vacated.
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Paul Smith becomes owner of the Intimate Bookshop
Paul Smith took over the Intimate Bookshop on East Franklin Street, formerly Abernethy's, and fitted it with display fixtures designed for his earlier shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
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Andrews and Riggsbee sell their Carrboro grocery to two other men named Andrews and Riggsbee
The partners Andrews and Riggsbee sold their Carrboro grocery to two men also named Andrews and Riggsbee, who kept the store's name. The sellers kept the tractor business they had bought from Bruce Strowd, which was moving into a new building on Greensboro Street.
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B. S. Carr Grocery reopens as Carr's Super Market, Hillsboro's first supermarket
After a full renovation, the B. S. Carr Grocery reopened as a self-service supermarket with an open meat counter, refrigerated produce cases and parking for 50 cars. The paper called Carr the owner of the first supermarket in the Hillsboro area.
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W. N. Tyler's Esso Servicenter holds its formal opening at West Franklin and Church streets
W. N. Tyler, a former Standard Oil sales supervisor, opened a new Colonial-style Esso station on the site of the old Ralph Weaver home at West Franklin and Church streets, with free movies and prizes on opening day.
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The Parkvue Drive-In Theatre opens west of Carrboro
The Parkvue, a drive-in theater for 280 cars on the Greensboro highway (N.C. 54) west of Carrboro, opened with two evening showings of Three Little Girls in Blue. J. W. Thompson and C. M. Rumley owned and ran it.
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Reeves Service Station takes over the Phillip Andrews station on West Franklin Street
The Gulf station at 214 West Franklin Street reopened under new management as Reeves Service Station on October 7, 1950, replacing Phillip Andrews Service Station.
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The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association opens its first office building on Calvin Street
After 37 years of meeting in stores and a depot office, the association held an open house for its own one-story Colonial-style brick office on Calvin Street in West Hillsboro, built with a fireproof vault.
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Colonial Stores opens on West Franklin Street in a building put up by Jack Hazzard
The Colonial Stores chain opened in a new building Hazzard had built. After Colonial Stores left, the Chapel Hill Newspaper moved into the building in late 1973.
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Efland businessman Stephen Carl Forrest dies
S. C. Forrest, 68, a leading Efland businessman whose 1920s house on US 70 is on the state Study List, died at Duke Hospital after a heart attack and was buried at Fairfield cemetery. His sons T. J. and S. C. Forrest Jr. stayed in Efland.
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The Village Theatre becomes the Varsity under new owners
Varsity Theatres, Inc., of High Point, headed by Hugh J. Smart, took over Chapel Hill's Village Theatre, renamed it the Varsity and made it a first-run house. The Village was the old Carolina Theatre, renamed in 1942 when the new Carolina opened.
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Bill Chance opens the Hillsboro Lunch on West King Street
Bill Chance opened the Hillsboro Lunch, a sandwich bar and short-order eatery next to Wynne's Beauty Salon, serving Cotton Nichols' barbecue, Brunswick stew and milkshakes from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Margaret Riley, formerly of the Hickory House, ran the service.
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Morris Telephone Company opens an exchange at Efland with lines to Cedar Grove
The Morris Telephone Company put a new 30-line switchboard into service in its new building next to the Baptist church in Efland, along with about 14 miles of rural lines running to the Cedar Grove community.
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Bob Cox and Monk Jennings open Town & Campus in place of Wilbur Kutz's Varsity Shop
Cox and Jennings's clothing store, Town & Campus, took over the East Franklin store where Kutz had run the Varsity Shop. It was replaced by another clothier between 1989 and 1993.
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Cole's Store opens beside its owner's house on West Hill Avenue
The small concrete-block store and gas station on North West Hill Avenue, built on the same lot as the owner's home, follows the pattern of rural crossroads stores of the 1940s and 1950s.
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Eno Mill becomes part of Cone Mills
The subsidiary joined the Greensboro textile corporation.
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James and Maxine Freeland open the Ja-Max Motor Lodge on US 70
Named for its owners, the long one-story motel northwest of town on the main Greensboro-Durham road let guests park at their own doors, and its hipped roof, stone veneer and horizontal-pane windows borrow from the Ranch house. It was probably the first of Freeland's motels, a string that later ran to Durham, Mebane and Roxboro and included Chapel Hill's Tar Heel Motel.
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Orange Speedway, Inc. takes over the Hillsborough track
Bill France Sr. became president of the new Orange Speedway, Inc., with Ann France as secretary-treasurer and Enoch Staley as vice-president; the other three original partners were no longer with the track. It was known as Orange Speedway from 1954.
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Dr. L. L. Vine buys the Nathan Veterinary Hospital and renames it
Dr. S. A. Nathan and Dr. L. L. Vine dissolved their partnership, and Vine, who had worked with Nathan for some years, took over the animal hospital on the Durham road as the Vine Veterinary Hospital.
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Ben Schreiber turns the Harry's Grill building into the Youth Center, a children's clothing store
Ben Schreiber and his wife closed their restaurant, Harry's Grill, and opened the Youth Center, a clothing store for infants and children, in the same building next to the Carolina Theatre.
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Bruce Strowd sells his car business to Crowell Little and Grady Pritchard
After thirty years at 100 West Franklin Street, Strowd sold the dealership in 1953. The new owners kept it in the same building for two more years.
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Carroll Hall is built and named for Dudley D. Carroll
The university completed the main building of its business school in 1953 and named it Carroll Hall for the School of Commerce's first dean. It became home to the journalism school in 1999.
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WCHL begins broadcasting
WCHL, Chapel Hill's new commercial radio station, went on the air in January 1953 at 1360 on the dial with 1,000 watts, broadcasting from sunrise to sunset from a site on the Durham highway. General manager Sandy McClamroch ran it with partners Roy E. Fullen and Lonnie Dark; its first broadcast was set for January 18.
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Fire damages the Hillsboro Lunch on West King Street
A Sunday night fire, blamed on spontaneous combustion, broke a front plate glass window and damaged the partition between the kitchen and the lunch room. Owner Bill Chance said he was fully insured and would reopen once repairs were made.
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Carrboro's last general store closes
Cliff Partin bought the Carrboro Cash Store on Lloyd Street in 1945 and ran it with his son Wilbur until competition from newer stores closed it in 1954. The store building, which dated from 1888, was torn down about 1960.
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The Belk-Leggett-Horton department store opens on West Franklin Street
The department store opened next to the Masonic Hall. A few years later the hall was razed for its parking lot, and the store had closed by the early 1980s, when Southern Bell moved into its space.
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A windstorm damages the Frozen Kustard drive-in across from Brady's on the Durham road
An evening thunderstorm with winds put at 80 miles an hour struck the Durham road east of Chapel Hill. It tore two signs off the Frozen Kustard drive-in, damaged its roof and knocked down its phone booth; the wind blew Brady McLennan back through his restaurant door.
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Bayard Wootten sells her Chapel Hill studio and returns to New Bern
Bayard Wootten sold the Wootten-Moulton Studio to her longtime manager T. C. Moore, who kept it running, and left Chapel Hill for her old home town of New Bern.
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Crowell Little and Grady Pritchard move the former Strowd dealership to 1710 East Franklin Street
The partners left the downtown building at 100 West Franklin Street in 1955 for a new site on East Franklin Street toward Durham. The old building was later remodeled for several businesses.
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A. D. Yates's Yates Motor Company takes over the Caston Motor Company's Dodge-Plymouth business
The Caston Motor Company, Dodge and Plymouth dealer at 419 West Franklin Street since 1946, gave way to the Yates Motor Company at the same address and telephone number in late May 1955. By October A. D. Yates was named as owner of the firm.
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A quarter-mile track opens inside Orange Speedway
A new quarter-mile track built inside the Orange Speedway mile opened with a seven-event NASCAR sportsman and amateur racing program under the direction of Bill France and Enoch Staley.
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Aldermen rezone part of the Porthole lot so the restaurant can expand
Over the objections of University officials, the Chapel Hill aldermen rezoned 6,400 square feet of the Porthole restaurant's lot from residential to business use so that owner M. M. Timmons could enlarge the restaurant. It had been a nonconforming use on land zoned residential near the campus.
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The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association becomes Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association
On a vote of its stockholders, the association changed its name to Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association, announced alongside the largest dividend in its history.
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Thomas Philip Lloyd sells the Carolina Pharmacy to Helen Duguid
Duguid kept the East Franklin drugstore going only a short time before Campus Laundry and Cleaners replaced it.
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Sophie Livas sells the Carolina Coffee Shop to Donald Belton
Sophie Livas, who had run the Carolina Coffee Shop since her husband George's death in 1956, sold it to Donald Belton, who took over on February 1, 1957.
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Bozo and Lillian Taylor open a second dining room at the Hillsboro Lunch
R. T. (Bozo) Taylor Jr. and Lillian Taylor, then running the Hillsboro Lunch, opened a newly renovated dining room next to their old quarters, giving them two dining rooms for daily meals and catering. The Hillsboro Merchants Association soon began holding its luncheon meetings there.
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Joe Page becomes sole owner of Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery
Page, a clerk in the East Franklin stationery store before the war, bought Herbert Ledbetter's share in 1947 and the rest of the business when Pickard died in 1958.
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The University's telephone system plans to double its East Rosemary Street exchange
The University-owned Chapel Hill telephone system announced a $300,000 addition that would double the size of its exchange building on East Rosemary Street, along with better party-line service. Bids for the addition were opened in March.
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The Osbunn Theater reopens under a new operator after W. M. Chance's death
The Osbunn Theater, closed for several months after the death of its owner W. M. Chance, reopened under Sam R. Owens of Durham, who leased it from the Chance family. Owens had run drive-in theaters in Durham, Burlington and Fayetteville.
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Bill France leases Orange Speedway to the Orange County Board of Education
Bill France signed a ten-year lease letting Hillsboro High School use the Orange Speedway grounds as its athletic field, for $100 a year, while races continued.
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Robert Rosenbacher opens The Hub, a men's clothing store, on East Franklin Street
The Hub took the store Charles Shields had just closed after 36 years of running his Home Owned Grocery there. It stayed 37 years, closing in 1996.
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The Oh Boy Drive-In opens at West Rosemary and Church streets
The Oh Boy Drive-In, run by the Boy family of Durham, was nearing completion at the corner of West Rosemary and Church streets in early July 1959. It was hiring in early August and serving cars by late August.
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A Hollywood crew films a racing drama at Orange Speedway and the Colonial Inn
A film company shot scenes for a television drama starring James Whitmore at Orange Speedway and the Colonial Inn in Hillsborough. Speedway co-owner Enoch Staley brought in several well-known drivers, among them Buck Baker, for close-up scenes.
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Dwight Ray and Seaton Lloyd sell the Lloyd-Ray Hardware Store after 37 years
The partners sold the Carrboro hardware store they had opened in 1922, long a gathering place for local politics. Tilden Hardware and Furniture Store held its grand opening in the same space on May 1, 1959.
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Orange County's first ABC liquor store opens north of Hillsboro
Two months after voters approved county liquor stores on February 3, the first ABC store opened in a new building that also held the county ABC warehouse, near where Highways 70 and 86 meet. It was the county's first legal whiskey sale in the modern era.
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Chapel Hill's ABC liquor store opens in Eastgate Shopping Center
The county ABC system's Chapel Hill store opened in Eastgate Shopping Center and sold between $2,000 and $3,000 of liquor a day in its first two days, about half again the daily average at the Hillsboro store, which had opened April 10.
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Duke Power opens its remodeled Hillsboro office on King Street
Duke Power Company held an open house at its newly remodeled Hillsboro office, then numbered 110 King Street, showing new facilities and electric appliances. Manager C. B. Parris had served the town's customers since 1936.
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Orange County builds its third ABC store near the Alamance line at Carr
The county ABC board put up a concrete-block liquor store on Mutt Byrd's land about 200 yards from the Alamance County line on the Roxboro-Burlington highway, with opening expected in mid-September. By early 1960 nearly all of its sales went to Alamance County customers.
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Orange County commissioners give a cool reception to a Research Triangle planning request
At a special meeting, Orange County commissioners gave only a lukewarm reception to a request to help fund a land development survey for the Research Triangle area and took no action pending firm figures. The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that the county expected to gain mostly new residents and school costs from the park rather than industry, and commissioners discussed zoning the area northeast of Chapel Hill toward the Durham County line.
- 1960s
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James Freeland builds the General Joseph E. Johnston Motel at US 70 and Interstate 85
Builder James Freeland put up the General Joseph E. Johnston Motel on US 70 near the new Interstate 85, part of a roadside group with his ice rink and, across the highway, the General Sherman Restaurant.
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The Piedmont Electric office on East Tryon Street is raised to two stories
The flat-roofed brick office built for the Piedmont Electric Company around 1950 as a one-story building was enlarged to two stories in 1960.
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Lincoln High students picket Colonial Drug and sit in at the Bus Station Cafe
The day after the sit-in, nearly 100 Black high school students picketed Colonial Drug after manager John Carswell roped off its booths, while others filled the counter at the Bus Station Cafe until proprietor Leo Eliadis closed it and were served standing at the Long Meadow Dairy Bar.
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Chapel Hill aldermen pay the town's share of the Research Triangle planning commission budget
The Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen appropriated $1,545, six percent of the $25,750 budget of the Research Triangle Regional Planning Commission for 1960-61. The commission also asked the Orange County commissioners for four percent, or $1,030.
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The Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association lays the cornerstone of its North Churton Street office
Cornerstone ceremonies were set for the association's new office on the east side of North Churton Street, half a block north of the court square, under construction since early June. Charles C. Hartmann of Greensboro designed the one-story Colonial Revival building with a drive-in window.
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James Freeland opens his rebuilt Holiday Ice Rink beside the General Johnston Motel
James Freeland opened a new 65 by 180 foot Holiday Ice Rink on US 70 three miles west of Durham, replacing a rink whose roof had caved in under snow the winter before. It stood next to his new General Johnston Motel.
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Leo Eliadis closes his bus station grill and opens Leo's Restaurant on West Franklin Street
After a Duke student sat in the Black section of the Chapel Hill bus station grill in June 1961 and was arrested at Leo Eliadis's request, Eliadis shut the grill. By early September he had opened Leo's Restaurant on West Franklin Street.
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Orange County's fourth ABC store opens at US 70 and Interstate 85
Orange County's fourth and largest ABC liquor store opened beside the General Sherman Restaurant, half a mile from the Durham County line. James Freeland built the colonial-style building and leased it to the county board; it was said to be the only ABC store in North Carolina on an interstate highway.
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Kenan Oil Company buys A. J. Snipes Jr.'s oil business and brings Phillips 66 to Hillsboro
Kenan Oil Company of Durham, the Phillips 66 franchise holder, bought A. J. Snipes Jr.'s Esso distributorship on Highway 70, its first foothold in Hillsboro, and kept Snipes on as its local agent.
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Carr's Super Market opens its new store across the street in Hillsboro
Carr's Super Market began a six-week grand opening of its new $250,000 store, five times the size of its old one across the street, with a terrazzo floor. Building began in April 1960, and Brodie Carr's son saw it through after his father had a stroke.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
