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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,368 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

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6 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,368 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–6.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Recent decades · 1976–2026

  2. Chapel Hill Cal Horton becomes Chapel Hill's town manager

    Cal Horton, Chapel Hill's public safety director, took over as town manager in 1990 after Sonna Loewenthal's months as interim manager. He held the post until 2006.

  3. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill Town Council funds the Midway Development Commission

    The council unanimously approved a $6,000 grant to promote Black-owned businesses and housing in the Midway district between Chapel Hill and Carrboro. James Brittian, NAACP president and the commission's project development coordinator, said the money would bring in millions.

  4. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Black public works employees bring a discrimination charge against the Town of Chapel Hill

    The Black Public Works Association, with the NAACP's help, filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging racial discrimination in promotions, pay and training in Chapel Hill's Public Works Department, where about 75 of some 110 employees were Black and none were managers. The EEOC assigned an investigator in the summer of 1996.

  5. Health or relief action · Chapel Hill; Orange Regional Landfill Orange Regional Landfill takes Hurricane Fran yard waste free as Chapel Hill faces tens of thousands of tons of debris

    The Orange Regional Landfill on Eubanks Road accepted yard waste at no charge until further notice. Town Manager Cal Horton estimated Chapel Hill had 25,000 to 40,000 tons of fallen limbs and trees and said the town would eventually remove curbside debris, while urging residents to haul debris to the landfill themselves.

  6. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Duke University easement to NASA stalls landfill candidate site OC-17

    Chapel Hill's manager reported that Duke University had filed an easement in favor of NASA on candidate site OC-17, leaving the towns unable to test the land. The council voted 8 to 0 to have the town attorney write to the U.S. Attorney and called an Assembly of Governments for October 22, 1997.

  7. Chapel Hill Cal Horton retires after sixteen years as Chapel Hill's town manager

    Horton retired in 2006 after the longest tenure of any Chapel Hill town manager. At his request, money raised in his honor went to a town award for employees who have given at least ten years of exceptional service, now the Cal Horton Service Award.

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

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.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026