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Heather Wagner Slane, Hillsborough Architectural Survey (2017).Open the sourceAll sources
Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–71.Back to highlights
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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1870s
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Land is bought for Hillsborough's (New) Town Cemetery on Corbin Street
The six-acre cemetery just north of the old town limits stands on land bought in 1871, though its earliest graves date from the 1860s. It now holds more than 3,000 graves in regular rows behind a brick wall on East Corbin Street, including military markers for both Confederate and Union soldiers.
- 1890s
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The Farmers' State Alliance buys the old Hillsborough Military Academy grounds
The Farmers' State Alliance's executive committee bought the old Hillsborough Military Academy barracks and about 40 acres from the Cameron heirs on November 16, 1895, with 70 acres from D. C. Parks and 20 from James Webb Jr.; the deeds were delivered and paid for by the end of the month. A 1913 plat of the neighborhood labels the old barracks as the Farm Life School building.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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Shepperd Strudwick builds the Bellevue cotton mill on South Nash Street
The Bellevue mill west of South Nash Street, a short way beyond the town line of the day, was backed by local investors and staffed by people leaving farm work. The Observer reports a Bellevue knitting mill going up late in 1904, its engine first fired on July 7, 1905, and a railroad siding and new stock for spinning that year; the 2014 survey dates the mill to 1909, perhaps an enlargement or rebuilding. By 1912 it ran 5,000 spindles and 200 narrow looms.
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Shepperd Strudwick buys Allen Ruffin's land north of the future Bellevue mill
Four years before the Bellevue mill was built, Strudwick acquired the tract north of the site from Ruffin, one of the Eno Cotton Mill's founders, probably to build company housing there.
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Maplewood Cemetery is started as a burial ground for Black Hillsborough
The cemetery on Corbin Street, west of the Town Cemetery, seems to have begun as a burial ground for Black residents about 1900 and may sit on an older Faucette family burying ground. The state cemetery census counts 207 graves, many marked only with fieldstones or not at all.
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The Eno Methodist congregation builds its church on land given by Allen Ruffin
The congregation formed for Eno Cotton Mill workers first met in an upper room of a mill building. In 1908 it moved into a simple front-gabled frame church with pointed-arch windows and a small belfry, on land Ruffin donated facing the mill across the railroad tracks.
- 1910s
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The Bellevue Commercial Block is built as West Hillsborough's shopping street
Five one-story brick buildings with seven storefronts on South Nash Street near the old depot became the West End business district for the mill village and West Hillsborough. Over the years they held a drug store, the Cates brothers' general store with a branch post office, a barber, a dry cleaner, a cafe and a movie theater.
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The Bellevue mill superintendent's house is built on South Nash Street
The two-story house built for the mill superintendent, with corbelled brick chimneys, a canted bay and a wraparound porch, is the most decorative early house in the surveyed area and stands out beside the plain mill houses next to it.
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R. B. Mason's land west of the Bellevue mill is platted as the West Hill Property
To meet the need for workers' housing near the two mills, Mason's holdings were laid out in 1913 as a grid of roughly equal lots, bounded by the Bellevue mill village, Eno Street and the railroad, West Hill Street, and Mount Willing Road (later King Street). Most houses there went up from the 1920s to the 1940s, and the section beyond West Hill Avenue was platted in the 1930s.
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Eno Cotton Mill rents its village houses to workers for 25 cents a week
The Eno Cotton Mill, founded in 1896 by Allen J. Ruffin and James H. Webb Jr., built a company village for its fast-growing workforce, and by 1915 the company was renting the houses to employees for a quarter a week. The 1924 Sanborn map shows about 100 mill houses west and south of the mill.
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The Ernest P. Cox House is built on Bellevue Street
The one-story hip-roofed house with projecting gabled wings and a wraparound porch at 112 Bellevue Street is the best preserved of West Hillsborough's one-story houses of the period.
- 1920s
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Eno Methodist Church adds rear classrooms used for West Hillsborough school classes
A side-gabled addition built about 1920 gave the church its T plan and held classrooms where early West Hillsborough school classes met, before the West End School was built on Bellevue Avenue.
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The Bellevue company builds its mill village north of the mill
In the early 1920s, as it doubled the mill, the company set closely spaced houses along a narrow loop road reached from West King and South Nash streets, in three plain types; the one-and-a-half-story houses had two front doors so workers on different shifts could come and go separately. All the houses appear on the 1924 Sanborn map.
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The Bellevue mill is enlarged in 1920 and again in
Expansions in 1920 and 1923 were part of a decade of growth in which the mill more than doubled its spindles and looms, and they coincided with the building of much of its company housing.
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The Paul Riley House is built on Riley Avenue in West Hillsborough
The Paul Riley House, a one-story frame bungalow with a shed dormer and tapered porch posts, was built at Riley Avenue and Eno Street. The Rileys were among the leading West Hillsborough families, and the Paul Riley Store went up nearby on Eno Street about 1942.
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Parts of the old academy land are subdivided as Oak Ridge and the Murray property
Portions of the Alliance tract were laid out as the Oak Ridge Development in 1923 and as the Murray property in 1924. Together they make up the west end of West Hillsborough.
- 1930s
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C. B. and Myrtle Ray Stanley's house is built on Allen Ruffin Avenue in West Hillsborough
The house at 406 Allen Ruffin Avenue was built for Charles B. and Myrtle Ray Stanley in the Eno mill neighborhood of West Hillsborough. Charles Stanley died at home there in 1958, and his funeral was held at the nearby Eno Methodist Church.
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The Weldon Riley House is built on Eno Street
The one-and-a-half-story bungalow at 811 Eno Street, with a gabled dormer, knee brackets and a wide engaged porch, is judged the best Craftsman house in West Hillsborough.
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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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West End Graded School is built on the old Cadwallader Jones homesite
A larger one-story brick Colonial Revival school for grades one through six, six classrooms and an auditorium, was built in 1936 to replace the two-story frame West End School on Bellevue Avenue, which became a community club building. It stood on the highest ground in West Hillsborough, inside a low stone wall, where the Cadwallader Jones house had stood.
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Eno Methodist Church is moved back from the road and remodeled
In 1938 the congregation shifted its frame church back from Eno Street and remodeled it.
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The Hillsborough Military Academy's brick barracks are torn down
The academy's three-story brick barracks, later used by the Farm Life School, were dismantled in 1938. Only the Commandant's House and a frame dining hall survive, with parts of the barracks foundation in the woods south of the hall.
- 1940s
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James J. Freeland builds his first house at US 70 and Faucette Mill Road
Three years after marrying Maxine Hayes, Freeland built the family's first home where Highway 70 crosses Faucette Mill Road, next to land that became the Fairview subdivision the following year.
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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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Fairview is platted as a neighborhood for Black families north of US 70
The first of Hillsborough's mid-century African American subdivisions was laid out in 1943 along roads that were already there, with twenty-five-foot lots meant to be bought in combination. Local builder James J. Freeland, who owned land in Fairview, built many of its houses.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Homemont is platted as a Black neighborhood north of Hillsborough
Laid out in 1945 with gently curving streets and evenly spaced lots on Torain and Lawndale streets, Homemont filled mostly in the 1950s and 1960s with small Minimal Traditional houses, several of exposed concrete block, built by more than one builder for sale or rent. Next to a trash dump, it had no paved streets until the 1970s.
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Town electricity and water are extended to West Hillsborough
Before the town took over in the late 1940s, the mills supplied power and water to their workers, cutting electricity to the houses during the day so the machinery could run, which left families without refrigeration.
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The William Edward McPherson House is built on Nash Street in West Hillsborough
The 2017 Hillsborough architectural survey records the William Edward McPherson House at 303 Nash Street and dates it to 1947. The McPherson family, whose Edward (Pete) McPherson managed Hillsboro's Black All-Stars baseball team in these years, owned several lots along the west side of Nash Street.
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A bus route begins running through West Hillsborough
Until 1948, when a bus line started running through its streets, mill families without cars had no easy way to reach downtown Hillsborough, nearly a mile away, or the rest of the county.
- 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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James J. Freeland develops Mountain View and Colonial Hills east of Hillsborough
Freeland laid out two small subdivisions of Minimal Traditional and Ranch houses on curving streets: Mountain View, beside the Eno on its north side at Highway 70 Business, where the family built its second house, and Colonial Hills, off Lawrence Road close to Highway 70A.
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James J. Freeland develops a small group of houses on Daye Street
Moving beyond single houses, Freeland laid out a small development along Daye Street northwest of Fairview, where tax records show he owned the land. He was known for selling homes to families who could not otherwise buy, with no down payment and a second mortgage instead.
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The Payne rental houses are built on South Nash Street
A group of compact rental houses and duplexes at 205-209 South Nash Street used the Minimal Traditional form with deep eaves, concrete block and metal windows, a pattern also seen in the Freeland houses on Daye Street.
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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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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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Hillsborough Heights is laid out, with a street named for James J. Freeland
The African American neighborhood on Terrell, Central, Forrest, Coley and Freeland streets, below US 70 on the west side of North Nash Street, was laid out in the 1950s. Its Freeland Street was named for the builder, who probably put up houses there.
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Northern Heights is developed as a Black neighborhood north of US 70
The subdivision on Rainey, Harper, Homemont, Riddle and Dixie streets followed the usual post-war pattern of curving streets and even lots, but like neighboring Homemont it sat beside a dump and went without paved streets or town services until the 1970s.
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The Bellevue mill village is platted and its houses sold to private owners
After the mill company had been sold by 1956, its village was surveyed into lots in 1958 so the houses could be sold. Unlike the Eno mill houses, which were carried off to new sites, the Bellevue houses stayed where they were, which is why the village keeps its original streets but has irregular lot lines.
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J. H. and Pauline McAdams build a Ranch house on Revere Road
Their brick house at 418 Revere Road, with its shallow hipped roof, banks of awning windows and built-in carport, is the survey's model example of the Ranch house in Hillsborough.
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The Fairview Extension is platted and filled with look-alike Ranch houses
The south end of Fairview, west of North Nash Street and south of US 70, was platted in 1959. Its houses are three variations on one Ranch design that differ only in their outside materials, which suggests they were built on speculation.
- 1960s
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James J. Freeland develops Holiday Park with a swimming pool
In the 1960s Freeland built Holiday Park northwest of town, a development with its own pool and other amenities; some of its houses were former Eno Mill village houses moved to the site.
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James J. Freeland remodels and sells the Colonial Inn
Freeland, who also restored and moved old buildings, owned the Colonial Inn on West King Street for a time and remodeled it before selling it in the 1960s.
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James J. Freeland builds his third family house on Highway 70
After homes near Fairview and in his Mountain View development, Freeland built the family's third house in 1964 on Highway 70 a little northwest of that subdivision, and lived there the rest of his life.
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Central Elementary School is built north of West Hillsborough
Planned as a segregated school for Black pupils next to Central High School, the flat-roofed brick and concrete building designed by Archie Royal Davis was finished a few years before desegregation and then served an integrated student body. Additions followed in 1975 and during the 1990s.
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The Occoneechee Steakhouse and a ten-room motel go up on South Churton Street
Among the restaurants that grew up around Daniel Boone Village was the Occoneechee Steakhouse, across South Churton Street, with a second small motel of ten rooms built beside it.
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The former Military Academy dining hall is turned into a church
The one-story board-and-batten building beside Barracks Road, thought to be a surviving piece of the long frame service building that stood behind the barracks, became a church building in 1965.
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Hillsborough makes its first annexations beyond the one-square-mile town
In 1966 the town began extending its limits past the square mile platted in 1754, first taking in homes on Cameron and Ruffin streets to the northeast and the Bellevue mill and its village to the west. Annexations have continued since, most of them under ten acres.
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Interstate 85 is completed south of Hillsborough
The interstate linking Charlotte and Durham by way of Greensboro was finished in 1966 about a mile and a quarter south of downtown, and a commercial strip grew up along South Churton Street between the town and the interchange.
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James J. Freeland opens the Daniel Boone Inn and restaurant at South Churton Street and I-85
A 1966 plat of the "Daniel Boone Inn and Restaurant Tract", eleven acres lying behind the Shell station on the northeast side of the interchange, shows a pond, a general store, a restaurant later known as the D. B. Cafeteria and a long two-story motel. It was the start of Daniel Boone Village.
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West End Graded School closes
The West Hillsborough elementary school closed in 1969, perhaps because the new Central Elementary School took its pupils once schools were integrated. The main building later burned, leaving only the rear wings.
- 1970s
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A government grant paves Fairview's streets and repairs its houses
Fairview, then outside the town and known to residents as a mud hole with bad septic systems and no paved streets or streetlights, had its streets paved in the 1970s with a government grant, which also paid to repair houses that lacked indoor plumbing.
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James J. Freeland remodels the William Whitted House on East Queen Street
In the 1970s Freeland remodeled the William Whitted House, one of several historic Hillsborough buildings he restored or moved.
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Daniel Boone Village grows into an amusement park
By 1972 the Daniel Boone Recreation Park had a roller rink, an ice rink, a ski lift, a refrigerated toboggan slide, an antique car and wax museum, a fort, an amphitheater and a campground, circled by a small railroad on which costumed performers staged holdups. With relocated log cabins and false-front shops it looked like a frontier town, and Freeland was dubbed the "Walt Disney of Hillsborough."
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The Hillsborough Historic District is listed in the National Register
The original one-square-mile town laid out in 1754 around Churton and King streets entered the National Register in 1973 as the Hillsborough Historic District. Its survey and nomination were brought up to date in 2014.
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The Daniel Boone amusement park closes and Boone Square replaces its north end
By the end of the 1970s the rides were gone, leaving only the campground, ice rink and amphitheater, and the northern part of the property was rebuilt as the Boone Square shopping center; a big-box supermarket stood on the ride site by 1983. Daniel Boone Village became a center for antique shops and restaurants, with the Big Barn Convention Center for community events.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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Hillsborough annexes West Hillsborough
West Hillsborough, which in 1950 had 1,456 residents and so outnumbered the town itself, came inside the town limits in 1976. Together with the next year's annexation it probably accounts for the town's population more than doubling between 1970 and 1980, from 1,444 to 3,019.
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Hillsborough annexes Hillsborough Heights
The African American neighborhood of Hillsborough Heights, north of West Hillsborough, was annexed in 1977, one year after West Hillsborough.
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James J. Freeland moves the Gatewood House from Yanceyville to Daniel Boone Village
Continuing his habit of relocating old buildings to his South Churton Street development, Freeland brought the Gatewood House from Yanceyville in Caswell County to Daniel Boone Village in 1978.
- 1980s
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Interstate 40 is completed south of Hillsborough
I-40 was finished in 1988 about a mile and a half south of Daniel Boone Village, and commercial and residential building south of I-85 picked up sharply afterward.
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Hillsborough annexes "Northern Fairview"
The June 1988 annexation took in nearly 150 acres, including much of the town's mid-century African American housing north of US 70. It brought town services but also higher taxes, which angered some residents.
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James J. Freeland dies
The Hillsborough builder, motel owner and developer of Daniel Boone Village died in 1989 at the Highway 70 house he had built in 1964. His children kept Daniel Boone Village and Boone Square.
- 1990s
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A tornado strikes Fairview, killing two people and destroying 29 houses
The 1992 tornado was probably the largest physical change to the neighborhood after its streets were paved. Rebuilding the lost houses renewed residents' sense of community and drew town attention and new infrastructure.
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Hillsborough annexes Daniel Boone Village and Boone Square
About 76 acres of Freeland's South Churton Street complex came into the town limits in 1998, by which time many of its buildings stood empty and the land was seen as ready for redevelopment.
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Fairview residents build a baseball field on a former dump
Residents built a ball field on the site of an old dump in 1999 and started a league to use it. For a decade it and a set of swings were about all Fairview Park had.
- 2000s
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Flynt Fabrics and Finishing closes the former Bellevue mill
The shutdown of the Flynt Fabrics and Finishing Company, successor to the Bellevue Manufacturing Company, in 2000 followed the Eno mill's 1984 closing and dealt Hillsborough a second economic blow. The mill buildings still stand between the town and West Hillsborough.
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A police substation with community services opens in Fairview
In 2002 a police substation, shared with other community programs, opened on Rainey Street.
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UNC public health students complete a community study of Fairview
After interviewing residents in 2001 and 2002, students in the UNC Department of Health Behavior and Health Education issued an action-oriented community diagnosis of Fairview. It is one of the few written histories of Hillsborough's northern Black neighborhoods.
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Work begins on improvements to Fairview Park
Construction started in 2009 on parking, playgrounds, picnic shelters and basketball courts at the park, which had until then been little more than the residents' ball field.
- 2010s
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Hillsborough hires hmwPreservation to survey buildings outside its historic district
With a Historic Preservation Fund grant from the state preservation office, the town contracted in 2016 for a survey of older buildings inside the town limits but outside the National Register district, where only eleven had been recorded. Heather Slane and Megan Privett did the fieldwork in February and March 2017, fully recording about fifty properties and five mid-century neighborhoods.
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The Hillsborough survey proposes the Ja-Max Motor Lodge for the state Study List
The survey report recommended the 1952 motel on US 70 for North Carolina's National Register Study List as one of the town's few surviving mid-century motels. It cited the eleven rooms, each with its own bath and parking at the door, the lamp-lined drive, and Ranch-house features rarely used on a commercial building, and proposed a 2.87-acre boundary. The National Register Advisory Committee added the motel to the Study List on October 12, 2017.
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The survey proposes adding the Military Academy dining hall and grounds to the Commandant's House listing
The report recommended the academy's surviving frame dining hall on Barracks Road, left out of the Commandant's House nomination, for the Study List as an expansion of that listing, with about 21.5 acres over three parcels. The land keeps the barracks foundation, old tree lines and a daffodil-lined path, and the Office of State Archaeology judged it likely to hold remains of the school. The National Register Advisory Committee added the dining hall and site to the Study List on October 12, 2017.
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