Chronology

The Hogan-Rogers House was built on the Hogan plantation on Purefoy Road

The two-story frame house on Purefoy Road, on land now owned by St. Paul AME Church, dates to the 1840s or 1850s; the 1992 township survey recorded it as the Lloyd-Rogers House at 1612 Purefoy Road, the only house in the township on a raised basement. A fireplace in that basement led the Preservation Society's director to conclude that enslaved people on the Hogan plantation probably lived and worked there. INDY Week reported in 2012 that many Rogers-Eubanks residents descend from people held on the plantation.

Daphne Athas's family moves to Chapel Hill

Athas came to Chapel Hill as a teenager in 1938 with her Greek family, who during the Depression traded a large Massachusetts home for a small house on Merritt Mill Road. She spent most of the rest of her life in Orange County.

Orange County begins discussing the first expansion of the Eubanks Road landfill

Ten years after the landfill opened, the county began discussing an expansion even though it had estimated the site would be full by 1985. Residents had been told the landfill would close after about ten years.

David Zucchino wins the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing

David Zucchino, a 1973 UNC graduate, won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for "Being Black in South Africa," his coverage of apartheid for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mark Chilton is elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council at 21

Chilton, then a UNC undergraduate, won a seat on the Chapel Hill Town Council in 1991 at the age of 21 and served until 1997. He took a geography degree from UNC in 1993 and a law degree from North Carolina Central University in 1997.

Orange County chooses to keep expanding the Eubanks Road landfill instead of opening a new site

With site OC-17 blocked, the county announced it would expand the existing landfill rather than close it. A new construction and demolition landfill was later built on the north side of Eubanks Road.

Doug Marlette's novel The Bridge, set in a fictional Hillsborough, stirs the town's writers

Marlette's first novel, The Bridge, is set in the fictional town of Eno, modeled on Hillsborough, where he lived and worked. Some of Hillsborough's writers took offense at characters based on them, and the manager of the Bull's Head Bookshop in Chapel Hill cancelled a reading.

People: Allan Gurganus

Mark Chilton serves on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen

Chilton moved to Carrboro and sat on the Board of Aldermen from 2003 to 2005, the seat from which he ran for mayor. He was working as an attorney and a broker and living in downtown Carrboro.

El Futuro runs a bilingual mental health clinic in Carrboro

El Futuro, a Latino mental health nonprofit started by psychiatrist Luke Smith, opened a Carrboro office in 2005, a year after its Siler City clinic. The Carrboro location closed in 2015 for lack of funding.

Mark Chilton serves four terms as mayor of Carrboro

Chilton was mayor of Carrboro from 2005 to 2013. Supporters held a roast in October 2013 to mark the end of his fourth term and about twenty years in local office.

Carrboro annexed subdivisions on the west side of Rogers Road

Carrboro annexed six subdivisions north of Homestead Road, including Fox Meadow and Highlands, bringing part of the Rogers Road area inside town limits. In September 2004 the aldermen had voted 6 to 1 to go ahead even though the historic neighborhood had asked the two towns to move their annexation boundary so the community would not be split.

People: Mark Chilton

Ben Folds Five reunite for a concert in UNC's Memorial Hall

In their first show in eight years, the band played its last album, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, in full at Memorial Hall for MySpace Music's Front to Back series. NC Arts Council describes it as a benefit for Operation Smile.

Subject: Memorial Hall

Commissioners drop Eubanks Road and choose two other transfer station candidates

Conceding that the 2007 choice had not adequately weighed its effect on Rogers Road, the commissioners voted 5 to 1 to pursue two other sites, the 143-acre Howell property and an OWASA tract in Bingham Township.

Penny Rich is elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council

Rich won a seat on the Chapel Hill Town Council in 2009 and served until 2012, working on land use, planning, public transit, affordable housing and economic development.

Merge Records marks its 20th anniversary with the XX Merge festival

The label held four nights at Cat's Cradle and a finale at UNC's Memorial Hall, with film screenings at the Ackland Art Museum and a free show at the Orange County Social Club in Carrboro.

People: Mac McCaughan · Laura Ballance

Subject: Memorial Hall · Cat’s Cradle · Ackland Art Museum

Chapel Hill adopts an inclusionary zoning ordinance

The Town Council unanimously passed an ordinance requiring for-sale developments of five or more units to make 10 to 15 percent of them affordable to households earning 65 to 80 percent of area median income, or to give land, housing or cash in lieu. It took effect in 2011 and does not cover rental projects.

Council freezes building in Northside and Pine Knolls for six months

The council voted 7-0 for a six-month development moratorium in Northside and Pine Knolls, backdated to May 23, 2011, while a community plan was drafted. Jackson Center staff helped organize residents in support.

Subject: Marian Cheek Jackson Center

Penny Rich is elected to the Orange County Board of Commissioners

Rich was elected a county commissioner in 2012 and served two terms, to 2020, working on economic development, job creation, affordable housing, transportation and social justice.

Mark Chilton compiles a land grant atlas of old Orange County

Chilton wrote The Land Grant Atlas of Old Orange County, Volume 2: The Saxapahaw Old Fields, tracing title to about a thousand parcels between 1728 and 1818 in western Orange and eastern Alamance counties. He found that roughly 95 percent of the county's deed records for 1752 to 1781 were lost after a Tory official buried the deed books and they rotted.

Merge Records holds its 25th anniversary festival in Carrboro

Merge marked 25 years with a festival built around Cat's Cradle, ending with an outdoor show in the club's parking lot that organizers expected to draw about 3,000 people after the indoor nights sold out. Passes were sold through the Cat's Cradle website.

Part of The Cat’s Cradle and the “Chapel Hill sound” of the 1990s · 30 events

People: Mac McCaughan

Subject: Cat’s Cradle

Barbara Foushee receives the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP's Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award

The branch gave Foushee its Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award for work promoting diversity and social justice. She was then the branch's secretary.

Penny Rich chairs the Orange County Board of Commissioners

Rich was vice chair of the county commissioners from 2016 to 2018 and chair from 2018 to 2020, and she led the board through the start of the county's COVID-19 response.

Mutual Aid Carrboro opens a COVID-19 solidarity fund for workers

Mutual Aid Carrboro partnered with NC Piedmont DSA to raise money for workers sent home without pay, running a solidarity fund for emergencies such as evictions and utility shutoffs. Applications were offered in Spanish, English and Chinese, with interpreter lines for Karen, Burmese and Kinyarwanda speakers.

Lydia Lavelle announces she will not seek a fifth term as Carrboro mayor

After four terms as mayor and fourteen years in town office, Lavelle said she would not run again, saying that to everything there is a season and that she looked forward to what came next.

Part of Carrboro’s LGBTQ municipal firsts · 15 events

David Zucchino wins the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction

UNC alumnus David Zucchino won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy. It was his second Pulitzer.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board honors Stanley Vickers and his family on the 60th anniversary of his court victory

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board passed a resolution recognizing the Vickers family's work to integrate the schools. Vickers, then in his 70s, attended and recalled eating lunch and going to gym alone as one of the first Black students at the junior high.

Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

Hsar Ree Ree Wei becomes executive director of Transplanting Traditions

Founder Kelly Owensby stepped back in spring 2022 and Hsar Ree Ree Wei, who was born in a Thai refugee camp and joined the farm as a youth intern in 2012, became executive director.

Justice Department opens a cold-case investigation into the Cates killing

The U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation into the killing under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act and its cold-case initiative for racially motivated killings before 1980. Cates's cousins Nate Davis and Valerie Foushee welcomed the review.

People: Nate Davis · Valerie Foushee

Latino residents press for Spanish-language mental health care at a Chapel Hill assembly

At a public accountability assembly at St. Thomas More Catholic Church organized by Orange County Justice United and the North Carolina Congress of Latino Organizations, residents called for more mental health services in Spanish. That month Alliance Health announced $500,000 for El Futuro's services and programs in Orange County.

El Futuro launches Mentes Fuertes, a Spanish-language mental health program in Orange County

Four Spanish-speaking community health workers began leading free ten-session psychoeducation groups at the Orange County Rape Crisis Center, St. Thomas More and Holy Family Catholic Church. By March 2024, 48 participants had enrolled.

Penny Rich runs for Orange County register of deeds

Rich, by then an assistant clerk of superior court, entered the 2026 Democratic primary for Orange County register of deeds. She campaigned on modernizing the office's technology and public website and on heir property issues affecting African American families.