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Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1970s
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Restaurateur Edward "Papa D" Danziger is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Edward "Papa D" Danziger (1893-1972), whose Chapel Hill restaurants fed generations of students, was buried in the cemetery.
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Richard E. Whitted becomes Orange County's first Black county commissioner
Richard E. Whitted, born in Hillsborough, became the first Black member of the Orange County Board of Commissioners in 1972.
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Rogers Road environmental justice
In 1972 officials placed the county landfill on Eubanks Road beside the historically Black Rogers Road community, promising it would run about ten years. It was expanded instead and did not close until 2013, and residents' organizing through the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association helped win a sewer line for the neighborhood, completed in 2019.
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Rogers Road landfill opens
Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County opened a shared, unlined county landfill on Eubanks Road, built in late 1972 beside the historically Black Rogers-Eubanks community, whose residents were told it would close after about ten years. It was expanded repeatedly and ran for 41 years, closing in June 2013.
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The James Tilley farmhouse is moved farther back from NC 54
In 1972 the Tilley I-house was shifted to a spot farther from NC 54, a move the report says damaged its historic character.
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The Orange County landfill campaign
The Eubanks Road landfill opened beside the Rogers Road community in 1972; four decades of expansions, lawsuits and the neighborhood's demands ended with its closure in 2013.
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The Pegasus, a gay bar, operates in the former Cave on West Franklin Street
In 1972 the basement bar once called the Cave, under the Record and Tape Center near Carrboro, ran as the Pegasus, a gay bar with a jukebox and a back room for dancing. A letter in the Daily Tar Heel called it defunct by February 1973.
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The Town of Hillsborough buys the Ruffin-Roulhac House for its town hall
The Ruffin-Roulhac House and its outbuildings, empty since the 1920s, were sold to the Town of Hillsborough in 1972. The town rehabilitated them as its town hall complex by 1975.
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UNC School of Medicine launches the Area Health Education Centers program
The AHEC program began in 1972 with three regions under an 8.5 million dollar federal contract with the UNC School of Medicine, to train and place health professionals across North Carolina. The General Assembly funded a statewide network of nine regions in 1974, and all nine were running by 1975.
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UNC abolishes the office of dean of women
The university ended the dean of women's office in 1972, after twenty-six years under Katherine Kennedy Carmichael. She stayed on as associate dean of students for supportive services.
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UNC names its new history building Hamilton Hall
The university named the new building occupied by its History Department for J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, founder of the Southern Historical Collection.
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Walter Royal Davis serves as a UNC trustee
Davis sat on the university's board of trustees and in the 1970s argued that proceeds from the state's sale of the university's utilities should go to the university.
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Betty Smith is buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery
Smith died in January 1972 after being moved to a convalescent home in Shelton, Connecticut. A funeral mass was said at St. Thomas More Church in Chapel Hill and she was buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery.
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N. Ferebee Taylor serves as chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill
Nelson Ferebee Taylor was the chief administrative officer of the Chapel Hill campus for eight years. His office's records deal with desegregation, the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare lawsuit and consent decree, and campus development.
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The Chapel of the Cross is listed in the National Register
On February 1, 1972 the National Park Service listed the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Moorefields is listed in the National Register
Moorefields was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. It was the earliest listing among the six rural Orange County properties the 1993 county survey found on the Register.
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Chapel Hill aldermen voted to buy the Eubanks Road site for the county landfill
Three months after the Chestnut Ridge site was abandoned, the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to buy a 200-acre tract on Eubanks Road for $235,000. An unlined landfill was then built on about 80 acres of it, next to the Black Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood.
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New Hope Improvement Association sues to stop the Eubanks Road landfill
Opponents of the landfill formed the New Hope Improvement Association, which drew about 500 members, and filed a lawsuit in late September 1972. The suit was denied in early October.
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The Commandant's House is listed in the National Register
The castellated brick house built for the Hillsborough Military Academy's commandant, the academy's only major surviving building, was entered in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Officials signed the landfill agreement that carried promises to the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood
RENA's chronology records that Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee, Mayor Robert Wells Jr. and county commission chairman H.D. Bennett signed the full landfill agreement. Residents remember Lee promising that their road would be paved and that the filled site would become a recreation center for them.
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Black Student Movement march remembers James Cates
A Black Student Movement march in memory of James Cates was photographed by Les Todd, whose print is now held in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives at Wilson Library.
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Cat's Cradle moves to West Rosemary Street
The club left its first home, a basement room near campus, for 405½ West Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, its second location.
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Chancellor Taylor spends a night in Winston Residence Hall
Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor and other administrators stayed overnight in Winston Residence Hall to draw attention to overcrowded student housing. The same year Winston became UNC's first room-by-room coed residence hall.
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Eno River State Park is created
After years of citizen opposition to damming the Eno for a reservoir, Governor James Holshouser accepted the first tracts for Eno River State Park in June 1973, including 90 acres donated by Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Bernheim. The first 1,000 acres opened to the public in 1975 along the river in Orange and Durham counties.
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Henry W. Lewis serves as director of the Institute of Government
Lewis succeeded to the directorship of the Institute of Government in 1973 and held it until he retired from the faculty in 1979.
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Hillsborough designates its local historic district
In the same year the Hillsborough Historic District was nominated to the National Register, the town designated a local historic district.
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Powell moves from the North Carolina Collection to the history faculty
Powell left the North Carolina Collection to teach North Carolina history on the UNC faculty, where he stayed until 1986 and taught more than 6,000 students.
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The Community Center is renamed for William M. Hargraves
Chapel Hill's Roberson Street Center, built in the 1940s as the town's segregated Negro Community Center, was renamed in 1973 the William M. Hargraves Recreation Center. Hargraves, a Black resident who had served on the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Commission, had died in an automobile accident.
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The Southern Oral History Program is founded
UNC's Southern Oral History Program was founded in 1973 under historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, its founding director until 2011, and was first housed in the history department. Its interviews with Southerners, now more than 7,500 recordings kept in Wilson Library, include many Chapel Hill and Orange County narrators.
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The William Rand Kenan Jr. Laboratories of Chemistry are dedicated
The university dedicated the William Rand Kenan Jr. Laboratories of Chemistry, and the chemistry faculty marked the occasion with two days of short courses on their current research.
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The Woods family takes over the King Street hardware store that becomes Dual Supply
Wesley Woods, who had worked in the West King Street store when it was a Western Auto, bought the business and renamed it Dual Supply. His family ran it from 1973.
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The county school board sells the closed Caldwell School property
After the school board asked its attorney in November 1971 to move toward a sale, it accepted $5,143.52 from the sale of the Caldwell School property. Pender later wrote that the building was demolished and the land went back to its owner.
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The Black Student Movement opens Upendo Lounge in Chase Hall
Upendo, Swahili for love, opened as a Black student lounge in Chase Hall under the Black Student Movement, with a dedication and a party. It replaced an old mini-union and was open to the whole campus.
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Heartsease is listed in the National Register
On April 11, 1973 the National Park Service listed Heartsease in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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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 county board buys land on Orange Grove Road for the new Grady Brown School
The board decided to buy up to twenty acres on Orange Grove Road for a new elementary school, the Grady Brown School. Its 1974 budget request put $1,900,270 toward the building.
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The county board names Orange High's new football stadium for coach Glenn Auman
The board named the new football stadium for Glenn Auman, who had coached for many years and taught high school classes.
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Howard Lee wins a third term as mayor by a landslide
In Chapel Hill's first November municipal election Lee carried every reporting precinct, taking 5,001 votes to 1,109 for graduate student Douglas Holmes, whom he had also beaten in 1971. NCpedia puts his share at 89 percent.
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Chase Park and Elliott Woods apartments are completed
The Inter-Church Council's housing corporation finished Chase Park and Elliott Woods, 79 federally assisted low-income apartments on Elliott Road in Chapel Hill. Construction began in January 1973, and the complexes took applications from June 1974.
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H. G. Jones becomes curator of the North Carolina Collection
Jones succeeded William S. Powell as curator of UNC's North Carolina Collection and adjunct professor of history. He held the curatorship until he retired in 1994.
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Joe Hackney and Bob Epting begin practicing law together in Chapel Hill
Joe Hackney began practicing law in Chapel Hill with Bob Epting in 1974, handling family law and civil litigation in the courts of Orange and surrounding counties.
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Orange County Rape Crisis Center is founded
The organization established local support and advocacy for survivors of sexual violence.
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Orange County builds Grady A. Brown Elementary School
The county put up Grady A. Brown Elementary, a centrally heated and air-conditioned K-5 building of about 67,800 square feet on a 20-acre site near Hillsborough, designed by Croft Inc. under Superintendent George F. Williams.
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Residents campaign to save Carrboro's former textile mill from demolition
In 1974 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen decided the vacant former Alberta mill should be demolished to make way for a modern shopping center. Residents led by Frances Shetley petitioned against it, the owner agreed not to tear it down, and the complex was nominated for the National Register in June 1975.
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Spanky's Restaurant takes the place of Sloan's Drugstore on East Franklin Street
Sloan's, open since 1948, gave way to Spanky's, one of eight restaurants that opened on East Franklin in these years.
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The Carolina Theatre divides its auditorium and adds a second screen
The East Franklin movie house split its viewing area in two to show two films at once.
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The University of North Carolina gives Albert Coates an honorary doctor of laws
The University awarded Coates an honorary LL.D. in 1974, three years after Duke University had given him the same degree.
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The produce stand Rachel Crook started at Merritt Mill Road gives way to a used-car lot
After about 35 years, the stand at the corner of West Franklin and Merritt Mill Road closed, and Brooks & Tobin put a used-car lot there. Crook's Corner later opened on the same corner.
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Carolyn Kizer and Po Fei Huang read Chinese poems in Greenlaw Hall
Kizer, then UNC's poet-in-residence, and Po Fei Huang, director of East Asian language and literature at Yale, read and chanted Chinese poems and translations in 101 Greenlaw as part of a week of programs on East Asia.
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A gasoline truck fire and explosion damage the Orange County jail
A fuel truck caught fire and exploded while at the county jail on Court Street, causing heavy damage to the building.
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Chapel Hill Transit begins service
Chapel Hill's municipal bus system began running on August 1, 1974, after Mayor Howard Lee and UNC Chancellor Ferebee Taylor cut the ribbon, with eight town, campus and park-and-ride routes. Carrboro was not yet served.
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The ArtSchool is founded
Jacques Menache, who had earned an MFA at UNC the year before, opened the ArtSchool in Carrboro in August 1974 to offer art classes. By 1978 the Carrboro ArtSchool also ran a gallery theatre, and the organization later became The ArtsCenter, which moved to Roberson Street in 2023.
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Lambeth presents the charter for the Order of the Tar Heel One Hundred
Thomas Lambeth, chairing a committee to study an adjunct to the Board of Trustees, presented its recommendation: a charter for the Order of the Tar Heel One Hundred, renamed the Board of Visitors after 1980.
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The Carolina Gay Association forms
Students who had met weekly since February 1974 as the Gay Awareness Rap Group won recognition from UNC's Dean of Student Affairs in early September 1974 and took the name Carolina Gay Association. The group met in Craige dormitory and in 1976 sponsored the first Southeastern Gay Conference.
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Vandals break or topple forty to fifty monuments in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
On the night of November 27, 1974, vandals broke or pushed over forty or fifty gravestones, and police patrolled for a week. Cemetery committee chair Shirley Marshall then faulted the town for ignoring earlier requests about ownership and repairs.
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A. L. Stanback School becomes a middle school
The former Central High School, used as A. L. Stanback elementary school since 1968, became a middle school in 1975 and served until the late 1980s, when it closed for several years.
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Albert Coates publishes By Her Own Bootstraps, on women and the law in North Carolina
Growing out of his family law teaching, the book traced how North Carolina law on women's political rights and domestic freedoms had changed, and gave much space to the Equal Rights Amendment debate, which Coates supported.
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Annie Dillard wins the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
Dillard won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, drawn from her private writings about the surroundings of her home in Roanoke, Virginia. This was years before she lived in Hillsborough.
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Carolyn A. Wallace heads the Southern Historical Collection and the Manuscripts Department
Wallace, born in Hillsborough, served as curator of the UNC library's Manuscripts Department and director of the Southern Historical Collection from 1975 to 1987, following James I. Copeland.
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Central Elementary School in Hillsborough gets a large addition
Ten years after the first building went up, the county added about 18,700 square feet to Central Elementary under Superintendent George F. Williams, bringing the school to roughly 44,600 square feet.
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Charles Kuralt wins a second Peabody Award, for On the Road to '76
Kuralt received his second personal Peabody Award for On the Road to '76, a weekly CBS News series begun July 4, 1975, visiting places and events in each of the fifty states for the Bicentennial.
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Chris Stamey and Will Rigby form Sneakers
While attending UNC, Stamey teamed with drummer Will Rigby to form the power pop band Sneakers, later joined by guitarist Mitch Easter; the group played Max's Kansas City in New York in 1976 and broke up soon after.
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Jones Grove adds a rear wing to its church
In the mid-1970s the congregation built a rear addition holding the pastor's office, restrooms and a baptismal pool, and covered the sanctuary walls with wood-look paneling.
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Lester Asheim becomes the School of Library Science's first William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor
Asheim, a former dean of the University of Chicago's Graduate Library School and former director of two American Library Association offices, came to UNC in 1975 as the library school's first Kenan Professor and held the chair until 1984.
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Mickey Ewell opens Harrison's, a basement bar with a dress code, on Franklin Street
Harrison's, a downstairs bar in downtown Chapel Hill named for its owner Harrison "Mickey" Ewell, opened with a doorkeeper and a dress code aimed at an uptown crowd, and turned away men in tank shirts on its opening night.
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Orange County Schools reorganize into K-5 elementary schools with a middle school and junior high
In 1975-76 the county dropped the two-grade elementary centers of 1969, returning to elementary schools of kindergarten through fifth grade, with grades 6-7 in a middle school and 8-9 in a junior high.
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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.
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The Ruffin-Roulhac House and its outbuildings are fitted up as Hillsborough's town hall
After the Town of Hillsborough buys the Ruffin-Roulhac House at 101 East Orange Street in 1972, it rehabilitates the house and its outbuildings, empty since the 1920s, as a town hall complex by 1975.
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UNC Lineberger Cancer Center is established
UNC established a cancer research center in 1975 under founding director Joseph Pagano. Later named for the Lineberger family of Belmont, who helped fund its 1984 building, it earned NCI comprehensive status in 1990 and is North Carolina's only public one.
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Protesters stop Klan leader David Duke from speaking in Memorial Hall
Black students filled the pit of Memorial Hall and kept Ku Klux Klan representative David Duke, invited by the Union Forum, from giving his speech. Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor called the disruption a transgression of one of the university's highest traditions.
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Orange County and the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro create the Orange Water and Sewer Authority
The Orange County Board of Commissioners and the governing boards of Chapel Hill and Carrboro incorporated OWASA under Chapter 162A of the North Carolina General Statutes. It was created as a public body to acquire, consolidate and operate the three existing water and sewer systems serving the area.
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Chapel Hill churches and residents sponsor Vietnamese refugee families
By July 1975 Chapel Hill residents had sponsored two Vietnamese refugee families and expected more. Four churches pledged about $1,500 for a family sponsored by UNC historian Thomas Reefe, and volunteers were directed to INFO, a referral service in the Inter-Church Council building.
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Rev. Theodore C. Nicholson begins a 41-year pastorate at Jones Grove
Rev. Theodore C. Nicholson of Durham led Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church from 1975 to May 30, 2016. During his tenure he ordained six associate pastors, among them his wife Bessie M. Nicholson.
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The North Caroliniana Society is chartered
H. G. Jones, William S. Powell and Louis M. Connor Jr. chartered the North Caroliniana Society to promote North Carolina's historical, cultural and literary heritage. Its office is at UNC, and its main beneficiary is the North Carolina Collection.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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Cane Creek is chosen as the site of a new reservoir and area landowners organize against it
A consultant's feasibility study concluded that Cane Creek, west of Carrboro, was the best site for a reservoir to supplement University Lake, and OWASA began assembling land there. Cane Creek residents and farmers formed a conservation group and fought the project in court for years, arguing that it would destroy farms and hasten the decline of agriculture and that expanding University Lake had not been properly considered.
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Hank Anderson starts a Saturday breakfast meeting of Black and social justice leaders
Anderson began hosting a Saturday morning breakfast at Dip's Restaurant where African American and social justice leaders discussed problems and political strategy. The group later made endorsements in Chapel Hill and Carrboro elections and carried his name.
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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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Richard E. Whitted becomes the first Black chair of the Orange County commissioners
Four years after joining the board, Richard E. Whitted became the first Black chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners.
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Richard Knight Jr. becomes Carrboro's first Black town manager
Carrboro hired Richard Knight Jr. as its first Black town manager, and he served from 1976 to 1980. He left to become deputy city manager of Gainesville, Florida, and later became the first Black city manager of Dallas.
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The Carrboro Bicentennial Commission publishes Mack Watts's Carrboro Yesterday and Today
For the 1976 Bicentennial the town's commission issued Mack Watts's local history, Carrboro Yesterday and Today. The 1983 inventory drew on it for the Weaver House and other early sites and names Watts among the memoir writers who sharpened local interest in the town's past.
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The idle Carrboro depot is converted into The Station
Lee Epting and Mike Macomson finished renovating the disused depot in 1976 after two years of negotiations, reopening it as The Station restaurant, later a music venue.
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The Alberta Mill complex is listed on the National Register
The mill, the railroad depot and the brick grist mill were listed together on the National Register of Historic Places, a year after the 1975 nomination made during the fight over demolishing the mill.
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St. Mary's Chapel near Hillsborough joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed St. Mary's Chapel, the 1859 brick Episcopal chapel northeast of Hillsborough, on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register. It was one of 84 properties across the state approved that day.
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Hillsborough votes to buy the old Ray Motor Company building for a fire station
The town agreed to pay $60,000 for the former Ford dealership on Churton Street as a home for the fire department, and Orange Rural Fire bought the lot next door. The Hillsborough and Orange Rural departments moved there later in 1976.
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WUNC-FM returns to the air as an NPR affiliate
UNC's radio station WUNC, which had begun FM broadcasting in 1952 and had been silenced by equipment problems in the early 1970s, returned to the air from Chapel Hill on April 3, 1976, as a National Public Radio affiliate.
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The Totten Center opens at the North Carolina Botanical Garden
The garden's administrative and interpretive building, its first permanent building, opened in 1976. A bequest from the estate of Henry Roland and Adelaide Totten made it possible, and it was named for them.
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The school board sells the empty Cedar Grove School to Orange County for ten dollars
After the building had stood vacant for nearly a decade, the Orange County Board of Education conveyed the former school and its eight acres to the county for $10.
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The state approves conveying the university's water and wastewater systems to OWASA
The Governor and Council of State approved the conveyance of the University of North Carolina's water and wastewater utilities to OWASA under Agreements of Sale and Purchase among the university, the two towns and the authority. The university's Board of Trustees had approved the conveyance on June 11, 1976.
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Judge Stanley Peele wins the Democratic primary for his district court seat
Incumbent district judge Stanley Peele of Chapel Hill won the primary with 13,390 votes to 5,445 for Chapel Hill attorney Charles Hodson and 2,171 for Gerid Cumby of Alamance.
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Severe drought creates a local water crisis
A drought from August 1976 to January 1977 forced Chapel Hill and UNC to buy more water from Durham, ban unnecessary water use and cut campus services. By August 1977 University Lake was lower still, and the new Orange Water and Sewer Authority kept conservation rules and used federal drought aid to buy Durham water.
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The Paisley-Rice log house joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Paisley-Rice log house near Mebane on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
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UNC trustees approve a Cane Creek pipeline on OWASA's recommendation
With University Lake 64 inches below capacity, the UNC Board of Trustees approved an $824,450 pipeline and small temporary dam to draw water from Cane Creek, described as a step toward the planned reservoir. OWASA, due to take over the University water system in January 1977, recommended the Cane Creek project over alternatives that included pumping raw water from the Haw River to a treatment plant.
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Orange Grove residents form the Cane Creek Conservation Authority
Farm families around Cane Creek organized the Cane Creek Conservation Authority to stop the dam and elected 23-year-old dairy farmer Bobby Kirk president; the group had about 100 active members and said 12 dairy farms would be affected. It argued that the reservoir would end farming in the area, that owners had not been consulted, and that Jordan Lake and other sources were alternatives.
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A Western Sizzlin' steakhouse opens at 324 West Rosemary Street and draws neighborhood pickets
The Western Sizzlin' Steakhouse opened on a Friday at 324 West Rosemary Street. Two days later about ten residents of the nearby Amity Court area picketed it in the rain over century-old trees felled for it and the traffic it brought.
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Mama Dip's Kitchen opens
Mildred "Mama Dip" Council opened Mama Dip's Kitchen in November 1976 in a small, failing 18-seat restaurant on Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, starting with $40 for food and $24 for change. The restaurant moved to a new building in 1999 and closed in July 2025 after 49 years.
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A new United States Post Office is completed on East King Street in Hillsborough
The post office at 144 East King Street, a one-story Colonial Revival building, was finished in 1977. It was the first of the new government buildings that went up on the blocks south and east of the courthouse in the late twentieth century.
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Anson Dorrance coaches the UNC men's soccer team
Dorrance, a 1974 UNC graduate, coached the Tar Heel men from 1977 through the 1988 season and won 172 games with them.
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Brick Odum Village apartments replace Victory Village married-student housing
The surplus military frame units that the university had set up on Manning Drive after the war as Victory Village lasted until about 1977, when brick married-student apartments called Odum Village took their place.
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Carrboro Civic Club's public library closes
The Carrboro Civic Club, which had run a volunteer public library since 1950 with some help from the town and Hyconeechee Regional Library, told the town in 1976 that it could no longer administer it, and the library had closed by 1977. An attempt in 1974 to turn the library over to town government had failed, and Hyconeechee's bookmobile served Carrboro until 1995.
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David Bacon opens the Pyewacket, a vegetarian restaurant on West Franklin Street
The Pyewacket opened in 1977 as a vegetarian café on West Franklin Street, run by David Bacon. By 1980 it had moved across the street into the Courtyard at 431 West Franklin, the former Farmers Dairy building, and added seafood, a bar and live jazz.
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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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Katherine Kennedy Carmichael retires from the university
Carmichael retired in 1977, thirty-one years after she became dean of women.
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Martini's, a Northern Italian restaurant, opens at 206 West Main Street in Carrboro
Martini's served Northern Italian food, with a bar and an outdoor patio, in the West Main Street building that had housed La Pizza. In 1989 it said it had been serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro for 12 years.
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Michael Simmons becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
Dr. Michael Simmons, superintendent in Dillon, South Carolina, since 1974, took charge of the Orange County schools in 1977. He resigned in 1983 to lead the Johnson City, Tennessee, schools.
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Planning begins for Carrboro’s farmers’ market
UNC organizing and town funding efforts supported a formal market.
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St. Joseph CME sold Henry W. Baldwin's Broad Street land to Carrboro for a park
Henry W. Baldwin, a Black landowner in the Lloyd/Broad neighborhood, left his estate to St. Joseph CME Church. During the pastorate of Dr. L. Kenneth Bennett the church sold a tract on Broad Street to the Town of Carrboro for a park, which was named Baldwin Park in his honor.
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Stanford Junior High School gets a small addition
A 4,300-square-foot addition was made to Stanford Junior High in 1977 under Superintendent George F. Williams.
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The Burwell School opens to visitors
The restored house has been open to visitors every year since 1977.
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Wiley and Erika Shearin buy the Faucette House and name it The Elms
Maude Faucette sold the house and about thirty acres to Dr. Wiley Shearin and his wife Erika, who shared the house with her, called it The Elms and added a one-story east wing in the 1970s.
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Pauli Murray celebrates her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross
Murray, newly ordained an Episcopal priest, celebrated her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the invitation of the rector Peter James Lee, who cited her family's connection to the parish. Her grandmother Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald had been baptized in the same chapel on December 20, 1854.
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OWASA commenced operations, taking over the water and sewer systems of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and the university
The three separately owned systems serving the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Carrboro were transferred to the Orange Water and Sewer Authority, which began serving the whole Carrboro and Chapel Hill community as a single public utility that day.
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The Bingham School site at the Oaks joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the site of the Bingham School at the Oaks on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register. It went on the list for further study, pending an architectural assessment.
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Carr Mill Shopping Village opens in Carrboro's renovated mill
Carr Mill Shopping Village, a shopping center built inside Carrboro's renovated former textile mill, was scheduled to open on May 1, 1977, with ten retail stores, a Harris Teeter supermarket and a Revco drug store. By that September it advertised about 25 businesses; the complex is now known as Carr Mill Mall.
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Court of Appeals lets OWASA survey Cane Creek land over owners' objections
Landowners including the estate of Nancy Armstrong had refused OWASA's surveyors access to the dam site. After a trial court ordered access on April 28, 1977, the N.C. Court of Appeals held that the authority could enter and survey before starting eminent domain proceedings.
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Bill Thorpe leads the voting for the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
In his second run for office, Bill Thorpe led the field from the early returns and won one of four seats on the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen, with Bev Kawalec, Marilyn Boulton and Gerry Cohen.
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Bob Drakeford is elected mayor of Carrboro
Robert "Bob" Drakeford, a Carrboro alderman since 1975 and a Carrboro Community Coalition candidate, won the mayor's race on November 8, 1977, with 57 percent of the vote over John Boone. He was the town's first Black mayor and served until 1983.
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Chief District Judge Peele halts Carrboro fire-lane towing
In a class-action suit by four Carrboro residents, three of them UNC students, Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele issued a temporary restraining order barring the town from enforcing its ordinance allowing cars to be towed from marked fire lanes on private property.
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The Institute's former Franklin Street building is dedicated in the names of Albert and Gladys Coates
The building the Coateses had given years and money to put up for the Institute, used after 1956 as the Consolidated University's headquarters and later by other programs, was dedicated in their name. Coates had earlier asked the School of Social Work not to name one of its new buildings for him.
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Caldwell and Cedar Grove volunteer fire departments are incorporated
The Caldwell Volunteer Fire Department was incorporated on December 6, 1977 and the Cedar Grove Volunteer Fire Department a week later, on December 13, extending local fire protection across the northern townships.
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OWASA asks the state for power to condemn Cane Creek land
OWASA petitioned the N.C. Environmental Management Commission for a certificate authorizing eminent domain for the Cane Creek reservoir, which would need about 700 acres of mostly woodland and prime farmland. The commission held a seven-day hearing between April and June 1978.
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Andy Griffith speaks at University Day in Memorial Hall
Griffith gave the University Day speech in Memorial Hall and recalled fighting back tears as he approached the building where he had first performed.
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Bill Dow and Laura Heise found the North Carolina Agricultural Marketing Project
Physician and farmer Bill Dow and Laura Heise founded the North Carolina Agricultural Marketing Project, modelled on the farmers' markets Dow had helped start in Tennessee. The project led directly to the Carrboro Farmers' Market.
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Cameron Park School is enlarged again under Superintendent Michael Simmons
A further addition to Cameron Park Elementary in Hillsborough went up in 1978, the third stage of the building, which by the early 1980s housed kindergarten through fifth grade.
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Clements Funeral Service moves into the old Presbyterian manse on North Churton Street
Clements Funeral Service took over the house at 148 North Churton Street, which had served as a Presbyterian manse and a doctor's office, and built a chapel beside it in 1980.
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Efland-Cheeks pupils use the old Cedar Grove School while their school is enlarged
Under county ownership the former Cedar Grove School served several purposes, among them holding Efland-Cheeks School students until an addition to their own building was finished in 1978.
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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.
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Lee Smith teaches creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill
Novelist Lee Smith taught creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill as a lecturer from 1978 to 1981, before joining NC State.
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Pauli Murray declines an honorary degree from UNC
Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor wrote to Murray on February 10, 1978 offering her an honorary Doctor of Laws at the commencement of May 14, 1978. Murray declined, citing the University's dispute with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare over dismantling segregation and her refusal to share the platform with Governor Jim Hunt.
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Roy Williams serves as an assistant coach under Dean Smith at UNC
Williams spent ten seasons on Dean Smith's UNC men's basketball staff before leaving to become head coach at Kansas.
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The Hillsborough Chamber of Commerce holds its first Candlelight Tour
The Chamber of Commerce organized the first Candlelight Tour of Hillsborough's historic houses as heritage tourism grew in importance to the town.
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UNC hires Willie Scroggs to coach men's lacrosse
Athletic director Bill Cobey recruited Scroggs, the top assistant at Johns Hopkins, to build the Tar Heel program. His teams went 120 and 37 over 12 seasons and reached the NCAA tournament every year from 1980 through 1990.
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Walter Spearman receives the Thomas Jefferson Award
Spearman received the Thomas Jefferson Award in 1978, near the end of a teaching career in which students admired his defense of freedom of speech and of the press.
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Yonni Chapman leads the North Carolina Memorial Hospital Employees Forum
Chapman, a hematology laboratory technician at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill from 1975 to 1985, served as president of the hospital's Employees Forum from 1978 to 1980 and helped unite coworkers against racial discrimination and unsafe working conditions.
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The Bingham School site is listed in the National Register
The Bingham School was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, one of six rural Orange County listings the 1993 county survey recorded.
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Jeff MacNelly wins a second Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
Jeff MacNelly, a former Daily Tar Heel sports editor and Chapel Hill Weekly cartoonist, won his second Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning while at The Richmond News Leader.
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St. Mary's Chapel is listed in the National Register
St. Mary's Chapel, the brick Gothic Revival Episcopal chapel on St. Mary's Road northeast of Hillsborough, built in 1859 for a congregation dating to the late 1750s, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 1978.
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Plans are announced for a Chapel Hill branch of the Orange County court clerk's office
Clerk of Superior Court Frank Frederick and Chief District Court Judge Stanley Peele announced plans for a Chapel Hill branch of the clerk's office, to open in January and handle traffic tickets and other misdemeanors docketed for district court in Chapel Hill.
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Carrboro Farmers’ Market is established
The market dates its founding to 1979, following organizing and planning in 1977.
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Edwin M. Yoder Jr. wins the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing
Yoder won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing while editorial page editor of the Washington Star, where he worked from 1975 to 1981.
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Four Corners Restaurant, named for Dean Smith's stalling offense, replaces the Rendezvous
The new East Franklin restaurant took its name from the four-corners keep-away offense of UNC basketball coach Dean Smith.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church builds its present brick church
The congregation replaced its earlier church on West Union Street with a one-story brick church with a steeple, and added an education building at the rear in 1990.
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Orange High School's Cultural Arts Building is fitted with a heat pump system
A note to the Orange High plant table records a heat pump system in 1979 for the school's Cultural Arts Building, work that falls in Michael Simmons's term as superintendent.
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Paul Johnston endows an Albert Coates professorship at the Institute of Government
Paul Johnston, a former Institute assistant director who made a fortune in business after serving as Governor Luther Hodges's chief administrative officer, endowed a professorship at the Institute in Coates's name. A professorship honoring Gladys Coates followed three years later.
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Rose's store leaves East Franklin Street, blaming high rent
After many years in the same spot, Rose's moved out, saying inflated rent forced it to go, and Rite Aid Pharmacy took the space.
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Sandy McClamroch helps found the Carol Woods retirement community
McClamroch, by then a former mayor and the founder of WCHL, was instrumental in founding the Carol Woods retirement community in Chapel Hill in 1979.
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Steven Fisher and Marcia Hawk move a threatened mill house to their Maple Avenue lot
The one-story house was to be torn down for an Andrews-Riggsbee Hardware expansion. The couple set it behind their own mill house at 202-A Maple Avenue and joined the two with a small room so they qualified as condominiums.
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The Long Meadow dairy property on West Franklin becomes the Courtyard shops
The old dairy site was rebuilt as the Courtyard, a cluster of shops reached by a walkway off the street, joined to the Pyewacket Restaurant.
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The Orange County Women's Center is established
An anonymous $30,000 gift in March 1979 created a fund for an Orange County Women's Center, meant to give office space to the rape crisis center, the Women's Health Counseling Service and the Orange-Durham Coalition for Battered Women, along with classes and counseling. By April 1980 it was open at 307 North Columbia Street, and it later merged with the Family Violence Prevention Center of Orange County to form Compass Center.
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The Town of Carrboro pledges $2,500 for an architectural and historic inventory
In 1979, at the Appearance Commission's request, the town committed $2,500 for a survey of Carrboro's historic buildings, seeing such a record as a basis for planning decisions. The commission hired UNC geographer John Florin to lead the work.
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The Tri Delta sorority buys the Coenen house on East Franklin Street
Delta Delta Delta bought the house Frederick and Susan Coenen had owned since 1947, when they bought it after Mrs. Adam A. Kluttz died.
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The last two houses on West Franklin Street are torn down for a used-car lot
Brooks & Tobin moved its car lot across Merritt Mill Road to the southeast corner, on ground cleared by razing the last two homes left on West Franklin.
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The old Samuel Phillips law office on East Franklin is enlarged as a home
A new owner, Philip Bens, bought the former law office of Samuel Phillips and doubled its floor space with a rear addition to make a more comfortable house.
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UNC starts a varsity women's soccer team with Anson Dorrance as its coach
UNC named Dorrance head coach of its new women's soccer program in 1979, and he coached the men's and women's teams at the same time for the next decade.
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Wootten-Moulton Photography closes
The photography studio shut after many years at a series of locations on East and West Franklin Street.
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The Paisley-Rice Log House is listed in the National Register
The Paisley-Rice Log House was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, one of six rural Orange County properties on the Register by July 1993.
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The Shack, a longtime beer bar on West Rosemary Street, closes
Owner John L. "Wheaties" Richardson closed the Shack at 5 a.m. after a farewell party, and by late May the building was being emptied for demolition. Before it was a bar the building had been a garage for the jitneys to the Durham train station and a bicycle shop.
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State commission overrules its hearing panel and backs condemnation
A three-member Environmental Management Commission panel recommended in March 1979 that OWASA be denied the certificate, but the full commission adopted the minority report and granted it. The Daily Tar Heel reported this was the first time the full commission had gone against a panel's recommendation.
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The state puts the Occoneechi village site in Orange County on the Study List
At its July 12, 1979 meeting the State Professional Review Committee looked at slides of four archaeological sites, one of them the Occoneechi Village Site in Orange County. It deferred a Mecklenburg cabin site for lack of documentation and placed the other three, the Orange County site among them, on the Study List.
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Joe Straley is elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council
In the municipal election, newcomer Joe Straley won one of four council seats with 2,796 votes, joining James C. Wallace, R. D. Smith and Jonathan Howes and edging out Joe Herzenberg. He was sworn in for a four-year term in December.
- 1980s
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A mill-style house is moved from Churton Street to North Hassell Street
A one-story frame house of about 1910, built like the town's early twentieth-century mill housing, was moved in the 1980s from a lot facing Churton Street just south of the New Orange County Courthouse parking lot to 310 North Hassell Street.
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A second story is added to the Hargraves Center's lower stone wing
In 1980 the one-story stone wing at the lower east side of the Hargraves Community Center on North Roberson Street was enlarged with a frame second story clad in horizontal siding.
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An antebellum office from the Henderson Jones house is moved to Montrose
A small frame office of about 1840, built for the Henderson Jones house north of Hillsborough, was moved to the Montrose grounds around 1980.
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An office building for the Orange County Board of Education goes up on East King Street
A one-story brick Colonial Revival building with recessed side wings was built around 1980 at 200 East King Street as the Orange County Board of Education office.
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Archaeological sites are added to the Hillsborough Historic District record
Additional National Register documentation submitted in 1980 identified archaeological resources within the Hillsborough Historic District; more followed in 1984.
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Carrboro is named a Governor's Community of Excellence
The state named Carrboro a Governor's Community of Excellence in 1980, partly for the quality of life its historic neighborhoods gave the town.
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Carrboro's historic buildings are surveyed
The town of Carrboro had its architectural survey in 1980, more than a decade before the rural townships around it were recorded; the report mentions it as groundwork for the county survey.
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Census counts Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro in
The 1980 census counted 77,055 people in Orange County, 32,421 in Chapel Hill (32,038 in the Orange County part) and 7,336 in Carrboro.
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Chapel Hill brings public housing under direct town control after a rent strike
After a rent strike and other problems in the 1980s, the town council took over public housing from a separate housing authority and ran it as a town department. Chapel Hill and Shelby are the only North Carolina municipalities with that structure.
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Christopher Fordham serves as chancellor at Chapel Hill
As chancellor Fordham oversaw a major revision of the undergraduate curriculum, while faculty research funding grew from 56 to 105 million dollars and the endowment from 30 to 130 million.
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Houses of African American families on the Eno flood plain off South Churton Street are removed
A row of small houses occupied by African Americans on the north bank of the Eno, east of South Churton Street and just south of the new Orange County Courthouse, is torn down or moved in the 1980s. One is moved within the district to 310 North Hassell Street.
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John Swofford is named UNC athletics director
Swofford, a former Tar Heel quarterback and defensive back, was named athletics director at 31 and held the post for 17 years, until he became ACC commissioner in 1997.
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Northside's Black population falls by about 40 percent
Between 1980 and 2010 Northside's Black population fell by roughly 40 percent as investors bought homes and converted or replaced them as student rentals; over the same period the share of university workers living 10 or more miles away rose above 60 percent.
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Orange County replaces houses on East Margaret Lane and South Cameron Street with a government complex
A group of houses on East Margaret Lane and South Cameron Street is cleared for county buildings put up between 1980 and 1988: the Department of Education at 200 East King Street, the Government Services Building at 200 South Cameron, its annex at 208 South Cameron and the Orange Family Medical Group at 210 South Cameron.
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Robert Campbell helps start Faith Tabernacle Oasis of Love International Church
Campbell and his wife helped start Faith Tabernacle Oasis of Love International Church, where he was ordained in the 1980s. He has said his bishop's charge to the congregation to go beyond its own comfort turned him toward the landfill and the neighborhood's water.
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The 1922 Hillsborough Township School building closes as a school
After Orange High School took the upper grades, the old school on West Tryon Street ran as an elementary school until 1980. It later housed the public library and then the Richard E. Whitted Human Services Center.
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The Parks-Richmond House opens as the Inn at Teardrops
As visitors returned to downtown Hillsborough, the Parks-Richmond House on West King Street was opened as a bed-and-breakfast, the Inn at Teardrops.
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The Phillips-Hill-Webb House opens as the Hillsborough House Inn
BelleVue, the Phillips-Hill-Webb House on East Tryon Street, began operating as a bed-and-breakfast called the Hillsborough House Inn.
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William F. Little receives the Thomas Jefferson Award
Little received the university's Thomas Jefferson Award in 1980.
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UNC housekeepers present grievances to the Physical Plant
Thirty Physical Plant housekeeping assistants gave director Claude Swecker a list of grievances in Berryhill Hall, including the rehiring of Gene Alston, an organizer they said had been fired for organizing. On April 2 Swecker granted two concessions to about sixty housekeepers.
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The first Festival for the Eno is held
The Eno River Association held the first Festival for the Eno on July 4, 1980, at West Point on the Eno, a Durham city park on the river. The yearly festival of traditional music, crafts and trades raises money for land protection in the Eno River basin.
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A former mill house at 203 Weaver Street is renovated as offices
In 1981 the old mill house at 203 Weaver Street was rehabilitated for office use, one of the early private preservation projects in central Carrboro.
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Albert Coates publishes The Story of the Institute of Government
Coates's history of the Institute, a book he had worked at for half a century, came out fifty years after the meeting that started it. Director Henry Lewis had read the manuscript in the late 1970s and sent page after page of corrections, some of which Coates took.
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Anna and Larry Hayes restore the old Lloyd grist mill as the Broad Street shop
The Hayeses bought the brick mill, long a Johnson-Strowd Furniture warehouse, and restored it to federal preservation guidelines as a wine and cheese shop named for the street that once ran in front. They rebuilt the lost loading dock and set stained glass in the arched openings.
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Hilliard Caldwell is elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
Hilliard Caldwell, who had advised the students of the 1960 Colonial Drug sit-in in Chapel Hill, was first elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1981. He served four terms, through 1997.
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James J. Freeland moves Poplar Hill across the Eno to South Cameron Street
Freeland, who had moved the Gatewood House in 1978, had the Poplar Hill house hauled over the Eno River from Tuscarora Drive to a new lot at 203 South Cameron Street, just south of Burnside, on the north side of the river.
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Karen Shelton becomes head coach of UNC field hockey
Shelton took over the Tar Heel program in 1981, after finishing at West Chester State in 1979 and spending a year as an assistant coach at Franklin and Marshall. She coached at Chapel Hill for 42 seasons and had 40 winning ones.
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Michael Jordan plays his Carolina career in Carmichael Auditorium
Jordan played all three of his Carolina seasons in Carmichael Auditorium in Chapel Hill and scored in double figures in 90 of his 101 games for UNC. He was Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year and National Player of the Year in 1984.
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Neighbors form Friends of Old Carrboro to press for traffic controls
In 1981 a small group of residents banded together to seek traffic regulation in one of Carrboro's early mill neighborhoods. By 1983 Friends of Old Carrboro, Inc., had become a tax-exempt nonprofit of about 80 members working to preserve central Carrboro, and it had helped research the inventory.
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Philip Meyer returns to UNC as a Kenan Professor of journalism
After running market research for Knight Ridder Newspapers from 1978, Meyer came back to Chapel Hill in 1981 with a Kenan Professorship at UNC. He later became the journalism school's first Knight Chair and taught until 2008.
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Playwright Paul Green is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Paul Green (1894-1981), the dramatist who wrote the outdoor drama The Lost Colony, was buried in the cemetery.
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UNC women’s soccer builds a national dynasty
Anson Dorrance, the program's head coach from its first varsity season in 1979 through 2023, led the Tar Heels to the 1981 AIAW national title and 21 NCAA titles, and his successor Damon Nahas added the 2024 NCAA title, for 23 national championships in all through the 2025 season. UNC won 22 of the 43 NCAA tournaments held from 1982 through 2024, and its teams went 103 consecutive games without a loss from 1986 to 1990.
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UNC women’s soccer wins the AIAW national championship
UNC won the AIAW national championship before the first NCAA women’s soccer tournament.
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Vermont Royster is among the first inductees of UNC's North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame
The UNC School of Journalism began its Journalism Hall of Fame in 1981, inducting Vermont Royster, former editor of The Wall Street Journal, with Pete McKnight and Charles Kuralt.
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Reviewers hold back Carrboro's Oak Avenue and Maple Avenue districts from the Study List
Four Carrboro requests from owners or interested parties came before the State Professional Review Committee on April 9, 1981. Staff asked that the proposed Oak Avenue and Maple Avenue historic districts be deferred, and the committee approved the rest of the day's Study List without them, including the Weaver House and the Old Carrboro Business District.
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State reviewers put several Carrboro buildings on the National Register Study List
On April 9, 1981, as the inventory was being finished, the State Professional Review Committee of the Department of Cultural Resources judged several Carrboro buildings eligible for the National Register and added them to the state Study List.
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UNC men’s lacrosse wins the 1981 NCAA national championship
UNC won the 1981 NCAA men’s lacrosse championship.
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Army Corps of Engineers issues the federal permit for the Cane Creek dam
The Corps' district engineer issued OWASA a Clean Water Act Section 404 permit to place fill for the dam on the same day the Court of Appeals voided the state certificate. The permit was set to expire on August 31, 1982 unless construction had begun.
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Court of Appeals throws out the state's approval of the Cane Creek project
On appeal by the Cane Creek Conservation Authority, several landowners and Teer Farms, the N.C. Court of Appeals vacated the commission's certificate, which Wake County Superior Court had upheld on March 5, 1980. It held that the decision needed an environmental impact statement under the state Environmental Policy Act and a review of the whole record, and sent the case back to the commission.
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Biscuit Towne, USA opens in the former Roy Rogers at 106 Mallette Street
After the Roy Rogers roast beef restaurant at 106 Mallette Street closed in the summer of 1981, Biscuit Towne, USA opened in its building in August. It specialized in biscuits and stayed open 24 hours.
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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.
