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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis. Browse all 77 storylines. Every entry names its source. See all 667 sources.

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10 dated events match your filters.

RENA Community Center.Open the sourceAll sources

Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–10.Back to highlights

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10 dated events
1870Reconstruction and the New South
  1. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
  2. Black-owned family farms and sawmills made up the Rogers-Eubanks area

    Migration or settlement · Rogers Road

    By the late nineteenth century the area between Homestead and Eubanks roads, north of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, was a neighborhood of Black-owned family farms and sawmills set among forest. RENA and the Town of Carrboro both date settlement of the wider area to the 1700s.

    Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

  3. Civil rights era · 1945–1975
  4. Robert Campbell moves to Rogers Road as the county landfill is built beside it

    Life event · Rogers Road, Chapel Hill

    Campbell, who grew up in the Northside community of Chapel Hill, moved to Rogers Road in the early 1970s, as the Orange County landfill was going in next to the neighborhood. He later became president of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP.

    Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

  5. Chapel Hill aldermen voted to buy the Eubanks Road site for the county landfill

    Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill

    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.

    Part of Orange County landfill campaign · 32 events

  6. New Hope Improvement Association sues to stop the Eubanks Road landfill

    Law, policy or court · Eubanks Road, Chapel Hill

    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.

  7. Officials signed the landfill agreement that carried promises to the Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood

    Law, policy or court · Orange County

    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.

    Part of Orange County landfill campaign · 32 events

    People: Howard N. Lee

    Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

  8. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  9. Residents founded the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

    Founding or opening · Rogers Road

    About 85 households founded RENA as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, putting a long-running informal community alliance on a formal footing. RENA went on to organize the Coalition to End Environmental Racism and to run the neighborhood's community center.

    Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

  10. David Caldwell retires as a sheriff's lieutenant to organize in Rogers Road full time

    Appointment, election or service · Orange County

    Caldwell joined the sheriff's department in 1985 after returning to the area and retired as a lieutenant in 2008 to work full time on community and social justice work. He became project director and community organizer for the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association.

    Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

  11. RENA opened its first community center on Edgar Road

    Founding or opening · Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood

    Three years after incorporating as a nonprofit, the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association opened a small community center on Edgar Road so the neighborhood had a place of its own to gather and run programs.

    Part of Historic Rogers Road neighborhood · 25 events

    Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

  12. Commissioners decide not to extend the life of the landfill

    Law, policy or court · Eubanks Road landfill

    The Board of Commissioners voted not to extend the landfill and approved cleanup of 50 illegal dump sites. In April 2011 it had postponed a decision on deepening the landfill, which could have added capacity to 2018.

  13. The county-funded Rogers Road Community Center opened at 101 Edgar Street

    Founding or opening · Rogers-Eubanks neighborhood

    Orange County commissioners awarded a $522,488 contract to Riggs-Harrod Builders of Durham on April 1, 2014 after a first round of bids came in at two to three times the authorized budget and the building was redesigned. The larger center, with a community room, kitchen, computer lab and outdoor courts, opened that December a short walk from RENA's 2010 building.

    Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

Suggest a correction to an entry →

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 4, 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