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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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9 dated events match your filters.

The Local Reporter.Open the sourceAll sources

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

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9 dated events
1910Early twentieth century
  1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
  2. Mill houses go up for the Lloyd Manufacturing Company's workers

    Construction or physical change · Carrboro

    One-story frame houses with front porches were built between 1910 and 1915 as worker housing for the Thomas F. Lloyd Manufacturing Company; 25 of them form the Thomas F. Lloyd Historic District on the National Register.

    People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder)

  3. Civil rights era · 1945–1975
  4. Integrated Chapel Hill High opens on High School Road

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    A new Chapel Hill High School campus opened on High School Road in 1966 as the town's first racially integrated high school, taking in the white student body from the Franklin Street school together with Lincoln High's students. Under freedom of choice the board had planned for white students to occupy the building a year before Black students joined, but Black students applied together for 1966 so that the school would not first be seen as belonging to the white students.

    Part of Segregated schooling and the rise of Lincoln and Central High Schools · 52 events

    Subject: Chapel Hill High School · Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

  5. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  6. The Alberta Mill complex is listed on the National Register

    Naming or commemoration · Carrboro

    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.

    Subject: Carr Mill · Lloyd grist mill (Broad Street)

  7. Chapel Hill brings public housing under direct town control after a rent strike

    Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill

    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.

  8. Barry Keith opens Surplus Sids on Main Street in Carrboro

    Founding or opening · 309 East Main Street, Carrboro

    Barry Keith, known as Sid, had worked for a surplus dealer called Poor Richard. When Richard retired, Keith bought his warehouse, kept the best stock and started his own military surplus store in 1988.

  9. Chinese School at Chapel Hill is founded

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    The Chinese School at Chapel Hill, which teaches Chinese language and culture, was founded in 1993 in a community that had grown around UNC since graduate students from mainland China began arriving in the early 1980s. The IRS recognized it as a tax-exempt organization in December 1999.

  10. Penny Rich is appointed to the OWASA board

    Appointment, election or service · Orange County

    Chapel Hill appointed Rich to the Orange Water and Sewer Authority board in 2001, and she served two three-year terms through 2007. She helped write water conservation policy during a severe drought.

  11. Walter Horton becomes Carrboro's first African American police chief

    Appointment, election or service · Carrboro

    Town Manager David Andrews named Captain Walter Horton, a Carrboro native who joined the department in 1993, to succeed retiring Chief Carolyn Hutchison. Horton led the department until he retired in early 2021.

  12. Drakeford Library Complex opens

    Founding or opening · Carrboro

    Orange County's Southern Branch Library opened in February 2025 in the $42 million Drakeford Library Complex at 203 South Greensboro Street in Carrboro, replacing the Carrboro Cybrary, which had closed on January 31, 2025. The building, named for Robert Drakeford, Carrboro's first Black mayor, also houses town recreation offices and WCOM Radio.

    Subject: Orange County Public Library

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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 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