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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1940s
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A state farm forester begins part-time work in Orange County
From 1942 Orange County farmers could call on a state forester part time for help with woodland management and timber sales. The 1947 forester, V. G. Watkins, reported on thinning demonstrations.
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James C. McFarling gives up dairying on the Bennett-McFarling farm on Erwin Road
McFarling, given the farm by an uncle, raised cotton on 170 acres and ran an 80-cow dairy with his wife Alice at the Triple-A farmhouse at 101 Erwin Road until he quit the dairy business in 1942. A milk house and cotton house were still standing in 1992.
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Orange County farmers bring in more than a hundred beef cattle
Over a hundred beef cows and heifers arrived in the county in 1942, and purebred bulls were placed as well. Fourteen 4-H boys bought Hereford heifers, and the Farmers Exchange Market bought the State Fair's first-place Hereford bull.
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Woodward Byars serves as Orange County's home demonstration agent
In 1942 Miss Woodward Byars was Orange County's home demonstration agent, alongside farm agent Don S. Matheson and assistant agent Joe N. Howard. She handled publicity for edible soybeans, worked the wartime programs through the home demonstration clubs and wrote on the new crop for the county papers.
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Thirty-nine neighborhood meetings in Orange County choose wartime neighborhood leaders
During the week of January 12, 1942, thirty-nine meetings explained the neighborhood plan and picked leaders, drawing 1,677 people in all, about 43 a meeting. Discussion covered bonds and stamps, more food, nutrition, machinery repair, scrap iron and a camp survey; a typical neighborhood of 45 white families got five leaders.
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Neighborhood leader training starts the Victory Garden program in Orange County
In the week of February 2, 1942, a training meeting was held in each of Orange County's 39 neighborhoods, where 163 of the 272 leaders made family lists, split the families among themselves and took instructions for the Victory Garden campaign. Leaders called on their neighbors that month with a garden leaflet and went back in March to leave a poster with each family that had planted.
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Three farm machinery repair meetings in Orange County draw 160 people
As part of the wartime push to keep farm equipment working, Orange County held three machinery meetings on February 26 and 27, 1942, with 160 attending. Neighborhood leaders handed out a repair checklist that farmers filled in and took to their dealers.
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Orange County's Black farm neighborhoods are mapped and elect their own neighborhood leaders
In March 1942 the neighborhood plan was carried to Black rural families: Black neighborhoods were laid out, leaders were elected and family lists drawn up. The report's map shows 27 Black neighborhoods, worked by county agent M. C. Burt and home agent Ruby Crews.
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Orange County counts 272 wartime neighborhood leaders
On April 1, 1942, Orange County's neighborhood-leader system had 117 white men, 78 white women, 54 Black men and 23 Black women serving as leaders, 272 in all.
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Orange County is picked as one of four counties in the nation to test the neighborhood-leader plan
On April 18, 1942, the federal and state extension services invited Orange County to show how well neighborhood leaders could reach every rural family with wartime programs, and the next day the agents met the chairman of the county defense council. The county's letter to farm families credited the choice to their response to the earlier scrap iron, Victory Garden and machinery repair drives.
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Orange County's neighborhood leaders meet at the Hillsborough courthouse to launch the wartime test
The county-wide training meeting on the afternoon of April 28, 1942, drew 265 people, among them 149 of the 195 white and 66 of the 77 Black neighborhood leaders. A. H. Graham, general chairman of Orange County defense, spoke after a chorus from the Black high school sang; other speakers took up war bonds, the Farmers Exchange's "Buy a Bond Pig" offer, salvage, gardens and edible soybeans, which the crowd tasted afterward.
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Neighborhood leaders ask Orange County farm families to pledge a pig or an acre for war bonds
In the same canvass, leaders took pledges under the "Buy a Bond Pig" and "Buy a Bond Acre" plans, in which a family promised the sale price of a pig or an acre of crops toward war bonds and stamps; the Farmers Mutual Exchange Livestock Market supplied pigs to families who could feed them out. In the June survey 58 percent of white families and 30 percent of Black families had bought or pledged bonds and stamps.
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Neighborhood leaders introduce edible soybeans to Orange County farm families
On their scrap calls, leaders gave a half-pound package of edible soybean seed to each family that agreed to collect scrap and sent others to stores stocking the seed, promoting the bean as a protein food that could take the place of meat. By the June survey the program had reached 96 percent of 269 families, and 78 percent had planted it.
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The Chapel Hill Weekly prints a special edition for the farm war campaign, sent to every rural family
On May 8, 1942, the Chapel Hill Weekly put out a special edition backing the county's neighborhood-leader campaign, and a sample copy went to every rural family in Orange County. Stories in the county's papers that spring covered the leaders, edible soybeans, scrap and war bonds; the Mebane Enterprise printed the leaders' names on April 30.
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Orange County home demonstration clubs take up the whole wheat and enriched bread program
During May 1942 every home demonstration club in Orange County worked on the whole wheat and enriched bread program, which Lee County ran through its neighborhood leaders. Of the 183 surveyed Orange families who bought wheat bread or flour that month and had not already used it, 9 percent bought whole wheat or enriched bread or flour for the first time.
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The federal extension service publishes its report on the Orange and Lee County neighborhood-leader test
In June 1942 the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued Extension Service Circular 387, prepared by Barnard Joy and J. P. Leagans, tracing step by step how Orange and Lee counties had organized neighborhood leaders and what the June survey found. It concluded that trained leaders chosen by their neighbors could carry wartime messages quickly to nearly every rural family.
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Black shank disease first strikes tobacco in Orange County
A new tobacco disease, black shank, appeared first in 1943 and spread quickly through the tobacco belt. The book ranks it with wilt for damage and notes a partly resistant seed.
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The Farmers Mutual Exchange builds a slaughterhouse on Occoneechee Farm
In summer 1943 the Exchange put up an abattoir next to the Hillsborough livestock market on Occoneechee Farm. Farmers could bring cattle and hogs for slaughter at cost and collect the meat the next day.
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Orange County FSA honors 15 Black farm ownership borrowers
The county Farm Security Administration office awarded certificates of merit to 15 Black farm ownership borrowers, former tenants it had helped to buy farms. By March 1944 the county had 22 approved tenant-purchase loans.
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Rev. Joe Brooks is a Ridge Road leader in the Black farm families' wartime food drive
Black neighborhood, 4-H and home demonstration club leaders across Orange County pooled efforts to produce and conserve more food for their families and the war effort in 1944. Rev. Joe Brooks was one of the leaders named for the Ridge Road neighborhood.
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Orange County's Black home demonstration clubs hold their first dress contest in Hillsboro
Women from every Black home demonstration club in the county modeled thirty-six dresses, suits and accessories they had made at the Hillsboro high school auditorium. By 1946 the clubs met monthly in rural communities including White Oak Grove, Jordan Grove, Cool Springs, Cedar Grove, Harmony, Ridge Road, St. Mary's, Sartin and Carr.
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Home demonstration clubs report the year's work at Achievement Day in Hillsboro
At the county home demonstration clubs' Achievement Day at the courthouse, the home agent reported that women had canned an average of 350 quarts and that 94 percent made their own clothes, and that the women's curb market in Chapel Hill had taken in $30,280.68 over the past year. Clubs from Caldwell, Carr, Cedar Grove, Efland, New Hope, Orange Grove, St. Mary's, Schley and Murphy had made 699 garments and 744 other articles for the Red Cross.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Four Orange County farmers run hybrid corn demonstrations
Four farmers ran corn demonstrations in 1945 on Experiment Station lines, using hybrid seed, shallow cultivation, close spacing and heavy nitrogen. The results showed yields could be more than doubled.
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Only 950 Orange County farmers have electricity
A dozen years after the county's pioneering rural power line, only 950 Orange County farmers had electric service in 1945.
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Newspaper describes the work of Orange County's public health nurses
A News of Orange County piece described the county public health nurses' duties: school inspections, immunization against diphtheria and smallpox, well-baby clinics twice a month, a monthly maternity clinic, tuberculosis and venereal disease clinics, orthopedic referrals, and the wartime maternity and infant care program for servicemen's wives.
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Black rural school districts more than double their Red Cross gifts
A Red Cross drive among the county's rural Black residents, run through the rural schools by A. L. Stanback and county agent M. C. Burt, closed with $472.55 from 428 people, against $224 the year before. Ridge Road district, with Mrs. A. A. Burt as principal, gave $36.32.
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The Farmers Exchange opens its Carrboro branch
The cooperative's Carrboro unit opened in March 1945, joining its Hillsborough branch. In the year to June 1952 the two branches bought $303,096 in produce and sold $1,149,392 in supplies.
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The Latta Cooperative Dairy opens its milk plant in Hillsborough
Organized in 1944, the Latta Cooperative Dairy built a small 500-gallon plant in Hillsborough that began work in June 1945. It bought milk from about thirty nearby farmers and ran routes in Hillsborough, Mebane and Durham.
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Charles Crisp Oliver builds an auto and tractor repair shop at the Cedar Grove crossroads
Oliver put up a one-story concrete block garage with a stepped parapet on the lot where his father, T. L. Oliver, had kept a blacksmith shop early in the century.
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Lee County joins the health district serving Orange
The district health department, begun with Person County in 1935 and joined by Chatham in 1937, added Lee County in 1946.
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Orange County farmers seed the first ladino clover plots
There was no ladino clover in the county in 1945. Half a dozen farmers planted trial plots in 1946, and the next year about 200 farmers sowed more than 1,000 acres.
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The Farmers Cooperative Dairy opens its plant in Chapel Hill
A larger cooperative of Orange, Chatham and Durham dairymen let the contract in June 1945 for a modern plant at West Franklin and Roberson streets; it was nearly finished in February 1946 and held a public open house at the end of May 1946. It handled fluid milk and made butter, ice cream and condensed milk.
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The county buys land from Mary Vincent for a Cedar Grove school for Black children
In May 1945 board members Charlie Stanford and James Compton were asked to find a site near Vincent's Store crossroads for a Cedar Grove school for Black children. The board bought the land from Mary Vincent for $1,000 in 1946.
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District health department X-ray unit offers free chest X-rays in Chapel Hill
The Orange-Chatham-Person Health Department's X-ray unit operated at the Chapel Hill health department from March 13 to 20, 1946, offering free chest X-rays for tuberculosis to any Orange County resident. Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin urged residents to use it.
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A community cannery is set up at Aycock School
G. A. Munn and E. F. Cude told the board in July 1947 that the cannery at Aycock School had used $3,500 and needed $1,500 more to finish.
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Clyde Roberts wins the Bank of Chapel Hill corn growing contest
The Bank of Chapel Hill sponsored a yearly corn contest with at least 50 entrants. In 1947 Clyde Roberts won with 93.3 bushels of N. C. Hybrid 26 on one acre, against a contest average of 61.9.
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Orange County breeders organize the Spotted Poland China Breeders Association
Hog breeders formed a county Spotted Poland China association in 1947, building on 4-H pig chains started by the Chapel Hill Rotary Club and the Sears-Roebuck Foundation. It had 65 members four years later.
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The Farmers Mutual Exchange opens a pulpwood yard in Carrboro
In 1947 the Exchange began buying pulpwood at its Carrboro warehouse, paying cash for any amount from a wagonload up. The book calls this new market the main advance in county farm forestry.
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Fire destroys the Farmers Exchange livestock market near Hillsborough
A fire of unknown origin leveled the Farmers Exchange livestock pens and office on the old Durham road near Hillsborough. The loss was put at $15,000; the workers escaped, but 13 to 20 cattle and 18 hogs died.
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J. L. Phelps wins the county corn contest with 136.4 bushels an acre
In the 1948 Bank of Chapel Hill contest eleven growers topped 100 bushels an acre. The winner, with 136.4 bushels, was J. L. Phelps, from the county's sandy tobacco section.
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New Sharon Church members build a $50,000 church and pay for it in a year
Members of New Sharon Church, most of them poultry farmers, put up a $50,000 building in 1948 and 1949. It was dedicated on Sunday, June 5, 1949, at a homecoming of about 800 people, and Lefler and Wager say the cost was cleared within a year.
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Hillsboro Speedway, Inc. buys the Occoneechee Farm racetrack tract
W. S. Murchison and J. R. Rogers sold two hundred acres of the old Occoneechee Farm, including its horse track, to Hillsboro Speedway, Inc., the company Bill France and four partners had chartered to build a stock car track. France had spotted the track while flying over Orange County.
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The Farmers Mutual livestock market near Hillsborough reopens in a new auction building
A new auction building with a sale ring, loading ramps, automatic scales and offices replaced the one lost to fire in December, and regular Monday sales were set to resume on March 15.
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The district board of health extends its ordinances to Lee County
The District Board of Health for Orange, Person, Chatham and Lee counties met at the Bank of Chapel Hill and extended the district's milk and excreta disposal ordinances to Lee County, which had joined the district in September 1946. Collier Cobb Jr. chaired the board.
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Farmers Mutual opens its new farm supply warehouse on Margaret Lane
The farmers' cooperative Farmers Mutual, Inc. opened its new Hillsborough warehouse with a ribbon-cutting by manager J. H. McAdams before a large crowd of county farmers. The building replaced a machinery shed the co-op had used for eight years to buy supplies and market grain, poultry and eggs.
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Schley Grange brings telephones to fifty-one families and wins a national community award
For a National Grange and Sears-Roebuck Foundation contest, Schley Grange members cleared right-of-way, cut cedar poles and strung three miles of wire so the telephone company could give service to 51 families; they also held a soil conservation workshop with the extension service. Schley won the national prize in November 1948, and the new brick Grange hall it paid for was dedicated on December 6, 1949 before about five hundred people.
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Alethea Burt starts a junior 4-H club at Ridge Road School
Principal Alethea Burt organized a junior 4-H club at Ridge Road School in the 1949-50 term, when 64 children were enrolled. She and her husband, farm agent Moses Burt, helped form 4-H clubs among Black youth in the county.
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Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation builds its headquarters in Hillsborough
The rural electric cooperative serving Orange and five nearby counties put up a new headquarters building in Hillsborough in 1949. By 1953 it ran about 1,100 miles of line to more than 4,000 customers.
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The two Orange County dairy cooperatives merge and take the Long Meadow name
In 1949 the Latta and Farmers cooperatives merged and bought the Long Meadow Dairies plant in Durham County, taking its name. Processing stopped in Hillsborough and went on in Chapel Hill.
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District health department takes UNC public health students for field training
Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin announced that the district health department would serve as a field training center for eight UNC public health students, four in health education and four in public health nursing, working for ten weeks across Orange, Person, Chatham and Lee counties.
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Arthur Wells is listed for the advisory committee of the Sartin school
The News of Orange County printed the county's new school committees, including the suggested advisory committee members for the Black schools. Oscar Beasley, Euddie Villines and Arthur Wells were listed for the Sartin school, on two-year terms.
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Schley Grange dedicates the hall it won in a national contest
National Grange master Albert S. Goss and Governor W. Kerr Scott were set to take part in the dedication of the new $50,000 Schley Grange Hall. Sears-Roebuck Foundation built and furnished the hall after the Grange won the 1948 national community service contest.
- 1950s
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A Weaver farm barn is rebuilt as a house, the Barnstable
While Sara Watters owned the Weaver House she deeded its two-story board-and-batten barn and several acres to her sister, a Charlotte interior decorator. The sister made it a dwelling with log and frame wings built from salvaged materials.
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The 1950 census counts 2,038 farms in Orange County
The census found 2,038 farms averaging 87.9 acres, with 179,073 acres, about 70 percent of the county, in farms. Eighteen operations of more than 500 acres showed farms beginning to consolidate.
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The Cedar Grove Ruritan Club is organized
Formed in 1950, the club helped landscape the new Aycock School and equip its gym, fielded a community baseball team and arranged group hospital insurance for members. In 1952 it placed first among 22 rural groups in the community improvement contest.
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Cedar Grove parents ask that Black educators help plan their new school
A delegation from the Cedar Grove Parent-Teacher Association asked the county board to let Central High principal A. L. Stanback and M. C. Burt, the county's agricultural agent for Black farmers, take part in planning the new Cedar Grove school.
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Every Orange County high school, white and Black, takes part in a grassland speaking contest
As part of the pasture campaign, each high school in the county entered a grassland oratorical contest in 1951. The Hillsboro branch of the Durham Bank and Trust Company gave $75 in prizes and winners went on to a district contest.
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Orange County 4-H members win at the Durham Fat Stock Show
In 1951 fifteen Orange County 4-H members showed fat steers, the largest group from any county, and ten took blue ribbons. Oliver Roberts showed the grand champion hog and Carl Walters the reserve champion.
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Orange Fire Protective Association buys Orange County's first rural fire truck
Because Hillsboro's town fire truck was restricted to calls within about a mile and a half of town, rural residents formed the Orange Fire Protective Association and raised money through one-time memberships of $10 for a house and more for farm buildings. By March 15, 1951, 260 members had given $4,500 and a Ford fire truck for the countryside had arrived, crewed by the town's volunteer firemen.
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Construction of Cedar Grove School begins
Work on the new school for Black children on NC 86 north of Hillsborough started in January 1951. By early February a well had been drilled and the footings poured.
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The board cuts the north wing and kitchen from the Cedar Grove School plans
To lower costs, the county board struck the six-classroom north wing, the kitchen, floor tile, clocks, bells, sidewalks and other items from Davis's design. The gymnasium was to serve as a multipurpose room partitioned into four classrooms until money for more space could be found.
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Orange County's seventeen home demonstration clubs count 443 members
During National Home Demonstration Week the county reported 443 women in 17 home demonstration clubs, served by two white agents and one Black agent, with 80 volunteer leaders who had held 62 meetings attended by 1,459 people the year before. Clubs made 38 United Nations flags for schools, churches and Grange halls as part of a citizenship study.
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Joffre Coe publishes an archaeological survey of the Occoneechee Hills area
Coe's study The Cultural Sequence of the Carolina Piedmont, in a volume edited by James B. Griffin, reported a survey and excavation near the Occoneechee Hills outside Hillsborough carried out under the Archaeological Society of North Carolina.
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The local Grange begins annual Homecoming services at St. Mary's Chapel
The yearly services kept the otherwise unused chapel in use.
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UNC trustees set aside Mason Farm land for a botanical garden
The university's Board of Trustees allocated about 72 acres of its Mason Farm property for the North Carolina Botanical Garden, officially establishing it. Botanist H. R. Totten's efforts helped procure the site.
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UNC Press publishes Mangum's study of tenant farmer law
The University of North Carolina Press published The Legal Status of the Tenant Farmer in the Southeast by Charles S. Mangum Jr. of Chapel Hill, a 22-chapter treatise on farm tenancy law that closed with proposed reforms.
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Farmers Home Administration pushes livestock to raise tenant incomes near Cedar Grove
The News of Orange County reported a Farmers Home Administration effort to raise tenant income by adding livestock to tobacco farming. Tenants on the Banks Wilson farm near Cedar Grove added hogs and other animals, and 42 county farm families had FHA operating loans.
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The county board votes to borrow for a six-classroom wing at Cedar Grove School
On a motion by board member Kemp S. Cate, the board voted to borrow $30,000 from the state literary fund and add $25,000 from its capital budget to build the north classroom wing cut from the 1951 plans. The county commissioners approved the loan.
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Millard Lee Bess joins the Cedar Grove School staff
The county board hired Millard Lee Bess, a Gaston County native, Winston-Salem State graduate and World War II veteran, for Cedar Grove School in September 1952.
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Cedar Grove School's six-classroom north wing is finished
The north wing Archie Royal Davis had drawn in 1951 was finished late in 1953 and closely matches the original classroom wing. With the new rooms the multipurpose room became the gymnasium and auditorium. Davis and board members Harry Breeze and C. W. Stanford inspected the wing in January 1954.
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The News of Orange prints the first picture of the Cedar Grove Negro School
A front-page photograph presented the new school as a major piece of the county's three-year building program. The story listed seven classrooms, a library, an office, a heating plant, two toilets and a multipurpose room used from the start as four classrooms.
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Five Forks Baptist Church is organized in a converted pack barn
Prayer meetings begun in 1951 by Gattis Brown of Glen Hope Baptist Church in Burlington moved in 1952 to an old pack barn at the Five Forks crossroads, and the church was organized there on July 2, 1953 with 27 members. Brown was pastor until 1964.
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Franc Sidler meets Troy and Robin Andrews on their farm and sketches a house for it
In the summer of 1954 the Swiss architect Franc Sidler, a guest of anthropologists renting a small house on the Andrews farm, met Troy and Robin Andrews there and drew a floor plan for a house they might build later. The sketch grew into the house finished on the farm in 1967.
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Tenant farming drops sharply in Orange County
Tenant-operated farms in Orange County fell from 513 of 1,939 farms in 1954 to 295 of 1,405 in 1959, and croppers fell from 261 to 135. In 1959, 500 of the county's farms were classed as tobacco farms.
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The Pinetum at Rocky Ridge Farm is deeded to the university's botanical garden
A protected stand of Coker's remaining forest along Meeting of the Waters Creek on the west edge of the development, known as the Pinetum, was deeded in 1954 to the UNC botanical garden for its care.
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The name Cedar Grove Negro School gives way to Cedar Grove School
The county board and local papers had called the school the Cedar Grove Negro School from the 1946 land purchase on. After 1954 they used Cedar Grove School or Cedar Grove Elementary School.
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First Salk polio vaccinations given to Orange County first and second graders
Local physicians working under the county health department gave the first round of Salk polio vaccine to more than 1,150 Orange County first and second graders. The work began on Monday, April 18, 1955 with about 500 Chapel Hill area children and finished on April 21 with the Hillsboro, Efland and Aycock schools.
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Arthur Wells is named to the Cedar Grove school advisory committee
The Orange County Board of Education named Wayne Compton, Oscar Beasley, Carter White, Lonnie Thompson and Arthur Wells to two-year terms as the advisory committee of the Cedar Grove school.
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Hilliard Caldwell leads the Chapel Hill chapter of the New Farmers of America
The Lincoln High School paper reported a prosperous 1954 to 1955 year for the chapter under Caldwell, its president, and printed his own account of the chapter's work.
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The county board approves a cafeteria for Cedar Grove School
After voting in September to study the need, the board approved a cafeteria for 150 pupils at Cedar Grove at no more than $40,000, while again putting off new classrooms. Archie Royal Davis's plans for it were approved and sent to the state in October 1957.
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Efland Home trustees sell the old reformatory farm to W. G. Fields Jr. and Nannette Fields
After nearly two decades of unknown use, the home's trustees sold the Efland property on April 29, 1957, to W. G. Fields Jr. and his wife Nannette, Chapel Hill investors, who cut the land west of the cottage into eight tracts between Redman Crossing and what is now I-40. The federation later gave about $12,000 from the sale toward a chapel at Dobbs School near Kinston.
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A kitchen and cafeteria are added to Cedar Grove School
A one-story brick kitchen and cafeteria, 78 by 49 feet, was finished behind the gymnasium late in 1958 to Archie Royal Davis's plans. One open dining room filled two-thirds of it, with the kitchen, dishwashing and storage along the north side.
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Carr Store Road is paved through Cedar Grove
Carr Store Road, the east-west road through the Cedar Grove crossroads, was paved in 1958, about a decade after the north-south Efland-Cedar Grove Road. Until then farmers in the area could find farm-to-market roads impassable for months of the year.
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Moses Burt retires after 23 years as Orange County's agent for Black farmers
Moses Cimuel Burt, a World War I veteran trained at NC A&T, Hampton and Cornell, retired as the county's African American extension agent in September 1958. Since 1935 he had backed farm programs in the county's Black schools and helped start 4-H clubs.
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Arthur Wells is named to the county's new agricultural extension advisory board
A 16-member Orange County Agricultural Extension Advisory Board, proposed by the extension service to advise on the county's farm program, was approved with Arthur Wells of Cedar Grove among its farmer representatives.
- 1960s
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Two classrooms are added to the south wing of Cedar Grove School
The two classrooms at the south end of the original wing, built to Archie Royal Davis's plans on bids taken in fall 1959, were finished by September 6, 1960, when the board inspected them with Davis and contractor Lindsay Fogelman.
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Cane Creek Reservoir and Bingham Township
From the first engineering studies of 1961 to the filling of the reservoir in 1989: OWASA's Cane Creek Reservoir, the watershed land purchases, and the Bingham Township farm families displaced.
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Troy and Robin Andrews return to the farm and enlarge the old Lloyd log house
After Troy Andrews retired in 1961 and inherited the farm with his sister Nita, he and Robin moved back and renovated and enlarged the early nineteenth-century hewn log house built for the Lloyd family, living there while they planned their new house.
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Orange Grove residents put up a sign naming the community
To make the Orange Grove name better known, residents set up a welcome sign beside the Perry farm on Bradshaw Quarry Road.
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David Caldwell's family bought a home on Rogers Road
David Caldwell, later a RENA leader, said his family moved from Merritt Mill Road to Rogers Road when Black families got the chance to buy homes there. He recalled a farming neighborhood of about thirteen houses, with dirt roads and cornfields.
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Mrs. Troy Andrews asks the county commissioners to pave SR 1111 near Calvander
Mrs. Troy Andrews brought the Orange County commissioners a petition from residents asking them to pave SR 1111, a two-mile road between Calvander and the Union Church road. The commissioners agreed to send the petition on to state highway officials.
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The Torian family deeds a lot beside Ridge Road School to Emma Torian Jones and Rev. Walter Jones
Maggie Torian and her children conveyed 0.79 acre west of the school, on Coleman Loop Road, to her daughter Emma and Emma's husband, Rev. Walter Warren Jones, who built a frame house there. Walter and Maggie Torian, Black farmers, had owned the land the school stood on and supplied its water.
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Orange County completes a new Agricultural Building in Hillsborough
The county's new Agricultural Building, designed by Archie Davis, passed final inspection and the county's agricultural offices moved in. A dedication and open house were set for April 1.
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Teacher Hassie Vanhook Gattis retires after 34 years
Hassie Vanhook Brooks Gattis retired in 1963 after 34 years of teaching Black children in northern Orange County, at the Sartin, Grover, Poplar Grove and Carr schools and, from about 1955, at Cedar Grove. The News of Orange County marked her retirement in June.
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A tobacco truck crashes into Carlton Mize's Rock Pile store
A tractor-trailer carrying 25,000 pounds of tobacco went out of control and crashed into the side of the Rock Pile, Carlton Mize's grocery on the Chapel Hill-Durham Road. No one was hurt, but the west wall was crushed and the front windows shattered.
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Eno Church and the Schley Grange restore the Old Eno Cemetery, and a state highway marker goes up
In 1964 Eno Church, helped by the Schley Grange, cleared and restored the Old Eno Cemetery and set a bronze plaque on a boulder where the first church stood. A state highway marker for Old Eno Church and Cemetery followed, erected in 1965 by the Department of Archives and History, and was dedicated with Synod executive Harold Dudley present.
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Edmund Strudwick finishes a portrait of retired farm agent Don S. Matheson
Hillsborough artist Edmund Strudwick finished a portrait of Don S. Matheson, who retired in 1963 after 34 years as Orange County farm agent. Paid for by public gifts, it was hung in the county agricultural building, and further gifts founded a 4-H fund.
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Black masons build Troy and Roberta Andrews's Sidler-designed house on the family farm
Working from plans by Swiss architect Franc Sidler, a former Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice, builder Carl Ellington and the African American masons Willis, Alfred Sr. and Alfred Jr. Barbee raised the Andrews House from stone gathered on the farm, starting in 1965 and finishing in 1967. It is Sidler's only building in the United States and one of the few architect-designed Modernist houses in rural Orange County.
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Five Forks Baptist Church dedicates its new block church
Needing room for a cemetery, the congregation moved to land bought from Arthur Wright for $1 and began building in 1966 with 2,400 donated blocks, much of the work done by the pastor, Tommy Willis, and members. The church was dedicated on December 10, 1967.
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Engineering study for UNC recommends a reservoir on Cane Creek
After the 1968 drought left University Lake dangerously low, a study sponsored by the University of North Carolina and conducted by the engineering firm Hazen and Sawyer recommended damming Cane Creek. The Haw River, the proposed Jordan reservoir, an enlarged University Lake and the Eno were among the alternatives set aside.
- 1970s
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Orange–Chatham Comprehensive Health Services begins
Orange-Chatham Comprehensive Health Services began in 1970 as a joint venture of UNC's Division of Health Affairs and a local community action program, bringing federally funded primary care to rural residents. UNC staffed its health centers, including Prospect Hill and Haywood-Moncure, from September 1970, and the program later became Piedmont Health.
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The Hill family sells parts of Riverbend Farm for Eno River State Park
In the 1970s and 1980s the Hills sold portions of their acreage along the Eno to the new state park, leaving about 27 acres with the house.
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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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Efland and Orange Grove volunteer fire departments are incorporated
As the Orange Rural Fire Department's board worked from 1971 to set up fire districts covering the whole county, rural communities formed their own departments: the Efland Volunteer Fire Department incorporated in September 1972 and the Orange Grove Volunteer Fire Company on February 1, 1973. New Hope followed later in February 1973.
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Robin Andrews chairs the Orange County Bicentennial Steering Committee
Roberta (Robin) Andrews chaired Orange County's steering committee for the national Bicentennial. She also raised money to restore the Burwell School in Hillsborough.
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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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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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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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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Planning begins for Carrboro’s farmers’ market
UNC organizing and town funding efforts supported a formal market.
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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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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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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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Carrboro Farmers’ Market is established
After organizing and planning in 1977, the Carrboro Farmers' Market began business in 1978, once the town amended its permit in February 1978 to allow the market at Carr Mill.
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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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Carrboro amends the Carr Mill permit to allow a weekend farmers' market in its parking lot
At the town's request and with the developers' consent, Carrboro amended the permit to let a farmers' market use the mill's second parking lot on weekends. A permanent open-air shelter was built with a $25,000 state matching grant, with the town supplying the site.
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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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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.
- 1980s
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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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Opponents sue in federal court, arguing the dam permit has lapsed
The Cane Creek Conservation Authority filed suit in U.S. District Court claiming OWASA's Corps permit expired on August 31, 1982 because no fill had actually been placed at the site. OWASA said its preliminary work before the deadline kept the permit valid.
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Orange County gets a grant to build a park behind the old Cedar Grove School
A $30,000 grant let the county develop recreation land behind the school, where it built a baseball field and a children's play area.
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The Fredricks site is found and excavated and Occaneechi Town is located
UNC archaeologists trying to relocate the Wall site in the spring of 1983 found European trade goods among Indian pottery in a garden about a hundred yards away, and dug there for four seasons. They uncovered a palisaded village of about a quarter of an acre with ten to twelve houses set around a plaza, a sweat lodge and a cemetery outside the stockade, and identified it as the Occaneechi town Lawson visited in 1701.
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OWASA agrees to buy the Stanford dairy farm at the dam site
The same day the commission ruled, OWASA agreed to buy 267 acres of the dam site from dairy farmers William and Joyce Stanford for about $1.28 million, bringing it to 60 percent of the 728 acres it needed. Between 20 and 25 of the 48 affected landowners had sold by then.
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State commission grants OWASA condemnation power for the third time
After a second hearing in late 1982, the Environmental Management Commission reissued OWASA's certificate in March 1983, a Wake County Superior Court judge sent it back, and on October 13 the commission reinstated OWASA's power of eminent domain. Mike Teer, by then president of the Cane Creek Conservation Authority, said the group would appeal.
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OWASA buys out most of the Cane Creek landowners
By April 1986 OWASA owned 48 of the 50 parcels needed for the reservoir, almost all bought through negotiated sales. Sam Crawford recalled an opening offer of $500 an acre that rose to about $3,500 to $3,600, and that his family lost 50 acres, including their biggest field.
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State reviewers approve adding the Frederick archaeological site to the Hillsborough Historic District
The Office of State Archaeology brought site 31Or231, listed on the agenda as the Frederick Site, to the State Professional Review Committee as an amendment to the Hillsborough Historic District. On April 12, 1984 the committee approved it with the day's other National Register nominations, without separate discussion.
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Federal court dismisses the opponents' permit suits for lack of standing
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina dismissed the two suits brought by the Cane Creek Conservation Authority and Teer Farms, finding they alleged only a general fear of environmental loss rather than a direct injury. The court noted that OWASA had so far acquired all its land through voluntary purchases.
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Cane Creek Conservation Authority members go to the General Assembly to oppose an OWASA bill
Fifteen members of the Cane Creek Conservation Authority traveled to the legislature to oppose a bill OWASA sought to settle its outstanding court cases and widen its authority.
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OWASA builds a temporary impoundment on Cane Creek
During a water shortage OWASA built a temporary impoundment at the Cane Creek site as an emergency water source, while the permanent dam was still being designed.
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Court of Appeals upholds OWASA's right to condemn the Teer land
The N.C. Court of Appeals affirmed the commission's 1983 certificate against an appeal by the Cane Creek Conservation Authority and Teer Farms, ruling among other points that water quality was a proper factor. The Daily Tar Heel reported that the case turned on two parcels owned by dairy farmer Thomas Teer, the last two of the 50 parcels OWASA needed.
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The Emily Dickinson Centennial Conference holds sessions at Bolin Brook Farm
Sessions of the Emily Dickinson Centennial Conference met at Bolin Brook Farm, the Andrews home near Calvander, in April 1986. The Andrewses often opened the property to meetings and house tours.
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Orange County Rural Buffer is established
Orange County adopted the Orange County-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Joint Planning Area Land Use Plan and map on August 19, 1986, designating a low-density Rural Buffer. The three governments signed the Joint Planning Agreement on November 2, 1987, and the county dates the buffer to 1988.
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OWASA breaks ground for the Cane Creek dam
OWASA held a groundbreaking for the Cane Creek Reservoir, designed by Hazen and Sawyer: a 72-foot-high, 1,350-foot earthen dam on a 760-acre site, with a 480-acre lake holding 3 billion gallons. Completion was scheduled for June 1989.
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Joe and Odell Thompson give a free concert in Gerrard Hall
The Mebane fiddle and banjo duo played a free folk concert at 7:30 p.m. in Gerrard Hall during Graduate and Professional Student Federation Week. The federation and the UNC Curriculum in Folklore sponsored it.
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The state adds Rocky Ridge Farm and Chapel Hill Town Hall to the Study List
Acting on requests from owners and sponsors, the State Professional Review Committee on April 14, 1988 placed the Rocky Ridge Farm Development Historic District, the Laurel Hill neighborhood, and Chapel Hill Town Hall on the Study List. Robert Stipe abstained on the two Chapel Hill votes.
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Cane Creek Reservoir is filled
OWASA completed and filled the reservoir on Cane Creek west of Carrboro, adding roughly three billion gallons of storage drawn from a 32 square mile drainage area. Before it came online OWASA's estimated dependable yield was about two million gallons a day, and the 1980s had brought repeated mandatory restrictions and purchases of water from neighboring utilities.
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The Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District is listed in the National Register
On August 8, 1989 the National Park Service listed the Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District in Chapel Hill in the National Register of Historic Places.
- 1990s
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The Ray-Kenion farms and the Charles Davis Farm join the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Ray-Kenion rural historic district and the Charles Davis Farm on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register. Both came to the committee as public requests, two years before the county survey was finished.
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The state adds ten Chapel Hill Township farms and buildings to the Study List
Ruth Little, co-principal investigator for the first phase of the Orange County survey, presented ten properties from Chapel Hill Township on July 8, 1992, and the National Register Advisory Committee approved all of them. They ran from the Smith-Cole House and the two Couch farms to Bethel Baptist Church and Murphy School.
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Reviewers turn down Tinnin Plantation near Efland for the Study List
Staff recommended rejecting the plantation because alterations had cost it much of its historic fabric, and on October 8, 1992 the committee accepted the recommendation. The applicant was to be told that the investigators of the countywide Orange County survey, then about to start, would look at the property again when their work was done.
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Grant supports new farmers’ market shelters
Funding enabled preparation of the Town Commons location.
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Sunnyside, the John Berry farm, joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed Sunnyside, the farm of the builder John Berry east of Hillsborough (later the Baldwin farm), on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register. It came to the committee as a public request.
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Jacob Jackson Farm is listed in the National Register
The National Park Service listed the Jacob Jackson Farm, also called Maple Hill, in the National Register of Historic Places on March 17, 1994, for its architecture and agriculture. The 63-acre district on St. Mary's Road northeast of Hillsborough includes a c. 1810 log cabin, a c. 1820 Federal farmhouse and a barn built about 1855 to 1910.
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John Dee Holeman and Joe and Odell Thompson open UNC's bicentennial folk heritage series
Bluesman and buckdancer John Dee Holeman and the Mebane string band duo Joe and Odell Thompson opened From the Outer Banks to the Blue Ridge: A Celebration of North Carolina's Folk Heritage at 2 p.m. on March 23, 1994, in Person Hall. The free series was part of UNC's Bicentennial Observance.
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The Alexander Hogan Plantation site in Duke Forest joins the Study List
The state archaeology branch presented the plantation site in Duke Forest on April 13, 1995. Members observed that such sites were not unique but were becoming rare, and that Duke's long ownership had kept this one undisturbed; the committee approved it unanimously.
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A hurricane destroys the old Thomas Cox Ellis wing of the Dr. C. M. Hughes House
The mid-1800s frame house of Thomas Cox Ellis, kept as the kitchen ell when his son-in-law Dr. Claude M. Hughes built his larger house beside it in 1912, was destroyed by a hurricane in 1996.
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Farmers’ Market moves to Town Commons
The market opened at its new town-center site.
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Maple View Farm builds a creamery and begins bottling its own milk
Maple View Farm, which had begun dairying near Hillsborough in 1963 when Orange County had about 100 dairy farms, built a creamery in 1996 and began bottling milk on the farm in glass bottles in place of selling to a co-op. It opened an ice cream shop in 2000; by 2019 only two dairy farms remained in the county.
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State reviewers back the Hogan Plantation site nomination over Orange County's objection
After a September 12, 1995 hearing, the Orange County Historic Preservation Commission found the Duke Forest site ineligible, and the county commissioners agreed, while the tract was under study for a new county landfill. That kept the nomination from the committee in October 1995 until Duke Forest appealed. On January 10, 1996 the committee heard the case, one member questioned whether landfill politics had shaped the county's finding, and it approved the nomination unanimously for the Keeper to decide.
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The News and Observer runs a series on the end of the Hogan family dairy near Carrboro
Sally Hicks's four-part series followed the Hogan family as they gave up their 450-acre dairy near Carrboro, long in the family, and turned it into a housing subdivision.
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Orange County buys 39 acres to expand the park at Cedar Grove
The county bought thirty-nine acres behind the old Cedar Grove School to enlarge its recreation park.
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The Earnhardt family gives Triangle Land Conservancy an easement on the Andrews farm
Jean and John Earnhardt, Troy and Robin Andrews's daughter and son-in-law, and their sons' families donated a conservation easement to Triangle Land Conservancy in March 1998, protecting 120 acres of the old Andrews farm around Bolin Creek from development.
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Dr. Arch Jordan House is listed in the National Register
The National Park Service listed the Dr. Arch Jordan House at 7015 NC 57 in Caldwell in the National Register of Historic Places on August 6, 1998, for architecture and social history. The Italianate house, built between 1875 and 1885 and home to physician Arch Jordan until 1905, served as a manse for three churches from 1905 to 1929.
- 2000s
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Orange County purchases Blackwood Farm
Orange County purchased the 152-acre farm from Nannie and Mary Blackwood.
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Holden-Roberts Farm is listed in the National Register
The National Park Service listed the Holden-Roberts Farm near Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places on May 2, 2002, for architecture and agriculture. The district centers on a Reconstruction-era farmhouse of about 1873, and in 2020 a conservation easement protected 57 acres of the farm on St. Mary's Road.
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John Dee Holeman plays a free blues concert at Graham Memorial
John Dee Holeman, accompanied by Billy Stevens, played a free noon concert at Graham Memorial on September 30, 2004, in the Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence's Thursdays on the Terrace series. Many of that semester's concerts tied in with William Ferris's course on Southern music.
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Reviewers reject the Great Oaks Plantation House, moved to Chapel Hill from near Greensboro
Staff recommended denial because the house had been moved more than forty miles from near Greensboro to Chapel Hill and had lost its geographic setting. Asked whether its architecture could outweigh the move, staff replied that the program valued place over fine carpentry, and on February 10, 2005 the committee accepted the recommendation. The same vote put the Cates-Dodson-Minnis House near Hillsborough on the Study List.
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The Cates-Dodson-Minnis House joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Cates-Dodson-Minnis farmhouse west of Chapel Hill on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
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An expansion of the Rocky Ridge Farm district joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed an expansion of the Rocky Ridge Farm historic district in Chapel Hill on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
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A state trust fund grant pays for a larger Cedar Grove Park
Beginning in 2007, with a $500,000 grant from the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund, the county greatly enlarged the park around the old school. It now has three ball fields, two basketball courts, a playground and parking.
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Joe Thompson receives a National Heritage Fellowship
The National Endowment for the Arts named Thompson, a fiddler from Mebane, a 2007 National Heritage Fellow for the African American string band music of the North Carolina Piedmont.
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Lightnin' Wells and John Dee Holeman play the Hillsborough Arts Council's Traditional Music Series
The Hillsborough Arts Council's 2007 Traditional Music Series presented Lightnin' Wells and John Dee Holeman at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 24, 2007, at the Masonic Lodge, 142 West King Street, in downtown Hillsborough.
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Rocky Ridge Farm's district expansion prompts a debate over the fifty-year rule
When staff presented the boundary increase and added documentation for the Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District on October 11, 2007, one member warned that stretching periods of significance into recent decades weakened the National Register, naming Rocky Ridge with two other nominations. Another member suggested the neighbors also claim significance for notable residents. The objecting member then moved approval of Rocky Ridge with the other routine nominations, and it passed.
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The Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District is enlarged in the National Register
On January 30, 2008 the National Park Service listed a boundary increase for the Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District, enlarging the district in the National Register of Historic Places.
- 2010s
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Transplanting Traditions Community Farm begins with refugee farmers from Burma
Kelly Owensby started Transplanting Traditions in 2010 with three years of federal Office of Refugee Resettlement funding, after meeting Karen families at a community garden run by the Orange County Partnership for Young Children. In the first year 44 people from Burma turned a pasture into a farm.
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The Captain John S. Pope Farm joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Captain John S. Pope Farm near Cedar Grove on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
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Transplanting Traditions begins farming at the Irvin Nature Preserve
After Triangle Land Conservancy began working with the farm in 2010 to find more land, Transplanting Traditions held its first growing season at the conservancy's J. Logan and Elinor Moore Irvin Nature Preserve, off Jones Ferry Road, in 2011.
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John S. Pope Farm is listed in the National Register
The Capt. John S. Pope Farm at 6909 Efland-Cedar Grove Road, near Cedar Grove, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 23, 2013. The Pope family has farmed the tract, now in organic tobacco, since at least 1870, and its two-story I-house dates from about 1870 to 1874.
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Schley Grange Hall near Hurdle Mills joins the Study List
Staff proposed the grange hall as eligible for its place in the social history of the area. With no questions from members or the audience, the committee approved it by a 7-0 roll call vote on October 11, 2018.
- 2020s
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The Schley Grange Hall is listed in the National Register
On April 23, 2020 the National Park Service listed the Schley Grange Hall near Schley in the National Register of Historic Places.
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A car crash sets fire to the Farm & Garden Center on NC 86
Early on June 17, 2020, a speeding car hit the gas pumps at the Farm & Garden Center, a gas station, country store and produce stand on NC 86 near Walnut Grove Church Road. The car and the store caught fire and the canopy collapsed; the two young people in the car were hurt.
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Orange County Public Library adds Spanish-language classes and bilingual storytimes
Beginning in the 2021–22 fiscal year the library offered Spanish-language computer basics classes with the Family Success Alliance and UNC's Community Workshop Series. By 2023–24 it held storytimes in English and Spanish at Carrboro's Century Center, added Spanish interpretation to free computer classes and ran a health series for Spanish speakers with El Centro Hispano, and in 2024–25 it added bilingual storytimes at the Carrboro Farmers' Market and monthly conversational Spanish programs.
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Census counts 36 migrant workers on Orange County farms
The 2022 Census of Agriculture found 174 Orange County farms employing 597 hired workers, including 36 migrant workers on seven farms. Between 2017 and 2022 the number of tobacco farms in the county fell by 60 percent.
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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 3, 2026.
