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Town of Chapel Hill: Official town pages.Open the sourceAll sources
Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–31.Back to highlights
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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1870s
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Rival claimants to Chapel Hill's town offices are told to stand down
On March 30, 1870, the Chapel Hill commissioners recorded that a group of residents claimed to be the village's officers, had taken some of the town's books and papers and had named A. Mickle magistrate of police. On April 1, Solomon Pool reported that their election had been held without any law authorizing it, on informal notice from T. M. Argo, and the board adopted his advice to take no action if they gave up the books.
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Wilson Caldwell returns to the reopened university and later heads its labor force
When the university reopened in 1875 Wilson Caldwell went back to work there. He became curator of South Building and head of the campus labor corps, and held the post until his death in 1898.
- 1880s
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Wilson Caldwell is elected to the Chapel Hill board of commissioners
Placed on the Republican ticket without seeking it, Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's labor force, was elected a Chapel Hill commissioner about 1886, defeating Professor Ralph Graves. James Lee Love recalled an earlier race, about 1882 or 1883, in which Caldwell beat Professor A. W. Mangum.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1930s
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Dr. Edwin Caldwell is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Dr. Edwin Caldwell, a Black physician and son of Wilson Caldwell, died in 1932 and was buried in the Black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, near his father. He had taken his medical degree at Shaw University and practiced for many years in Chapel Hill.
- 1940s
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Isaac Hall Manning retires from the medical faculty
After leaving the deanship Manning stayed on as a professor until he retired in 1940.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Journey of Reconciliation comes to Chapel Hill
Interracial riders testing segregation on interstate buses reached Chapel Hill on April 12, 1947. The next day police arrested four of them at the bus station and a white cab driver struck rider James Peck. Convicted in Orange County, Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joe Felmet surrendered at the Hillsborough courthouse on March 21, 1949 to serve chain-gang sentences.
- 1960s
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Chapel Hill builds its first public housing at Craig-Gomains and Lindsay Street
Chapel Hill's first public housing neighborhoods were Craig-Gomains (40 units) and Lindsay Street (9 units), both built in 1967; in November 1967 the units were still being readied for occupancy, so the first tenants moved in late 1967 or in 1968. Both remain in the town's 296-unit, 12-neighborhood public housing portfolio.
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Preserving affordable housing
Chapel Hill opened its first public housing in 1967, brought it under town control after a rent strike in the 1980s, and with Carrboro and the county built the Orange Community Housing and Land Trust from 1991. Conservation districts for Northside and Pine Knolls, inclusionary zoning in 2010, housing bonds in 2016 and 2018 and the Northside land bank followed, and the land trust marked 30 years with 332 permanently affordable homes in 2021.
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Chapel Hill adds five more public housing neighborhoods
North Columbia Street (1968), South Estes Drive (1970), and Airport Gardens, Rainbow Heights and South Roberson Street (all 1972) extended the town's public housing after the first two 1967 sites.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
- 1980s
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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.
- 1990s
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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.
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Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Orange County begin a countywide search for a new landfill site
The three governing boards started a countywide search for the next sanitary landfill, carried out with a citizens' Landfill Search Committee and an engineering consultant. The Greene Tract, bought in 1984 for landfill use, was screened but not made a finalist.
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Chapel Hill creates a domestic partner registry
The Town of Chapel Hill established a domestic partner registry in 1995, the year after Carrboro adopted its own. The Town added sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to its employment protections in 2004.
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Orange County ends bookmobile service to fund the Carrboro branch
When the Carrboro branch opened at McDougle in 1995, Orange County moved money to it by cutting the library's bookmobile service to the whole county. The bookmobile had been Carrboro's main public library service since the Civic Club library closed in 1977.
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Chapel Hill Town Council recommends site OC-17 beside the Eubanks Road landfill for the next county landfill
After the search narrowed to four sites judged permittable, the council voted 7 to 2 to recommend a reduced site OC-17, adjacent to the existing landfill, as the county's next sanitary landfill. INDY Week reports that the county commissioners and the Hillsborough board also voted for it that month, with Carrboro Mayor Mike Nelson opposed.
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Chapel Hill authorizes buying land beside the landfill to widen its buffer
The council unanimously authorized the town manager to buy the 4.05-acre Wilson property adjoining the Eubanks Road landfill at $6,000 an acre to expand a minimal buffer, subject to approval by Carrboro and Orange County.
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Four governing boards hold a unified public hearing on a new landfill next to the Eubanks Road site
The Orange County commissioners, Chapel Hill council, Carrboro aldermen and Hillsborough commissioners took comment on site 17 and three alternatives. Neighbours including David Caldwell, Kathy Schinley and Cornelius Kirschner spoke against it, B.B. Olive presented a 39-signature petition, and Frank Emory, representing Duke University, said the poorest residents lived nearest site 17.
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Chapel Hill approves digging on the Neville Tract to build new landfill cells
The council voted 9 to 0 for a special use permit letting the Orange Regional Landfill take earth from the Neville Tract to build containment cells and for daily cover, with access across landfill property to Eubanks Road. Work was to begin by 1999 and end by 2007.
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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.
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Chapel Hill sets conditions for new solid waste sites before handing control to the county
The council unanimously directed its Landfill Owners Group members to secure a construction and demolition waste site by fall 1998, naming land on the north side of Eubanks Road next to the landfill, with eminent domain if needed, and the Greene Tract as options. It said pending solid waste issues had to be settled before any change in governance.
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Chapel Hill backs countywide funding to extend water lines to the Rogers Road neighborhood
By a 7 to 2 vote the council said water service lines for the community around the landfill should be paid for from a countywide revenue source so that all county residents share the cost, and opposed using the sales tax for those benefits.
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Chapel Hill lets Orange County commissioners pick the next construction and demolition landfill site
With the existing construction and demolition landfill expected to fill by summer 2000, the council voted 9 to 0 to let the Board of Commissioners select an in-county replacement site on its behalf, citing time pressure and the expected transfer of solid waste authority to the county.
- 2000s
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County Library Services Task Force recommends expanding library service across Orange County
In June 2000 the Board of Commissioners created a 14-member Library Services Task Force to study county library service. Its 2001 report recommended raising library funding to the state per-capita average, starting library projects in the northern and southern parts of the county together, building an Orange County heritage center, and offering Internet-based library service in the Carrboro Century Center.
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Town Council approves UNC's main-campus Development Plan under OI-4 zoning
The Chapel Hill Town Council approved the university's Development Plan covering 582 acres of the main campus in the Office/Institutional-4 district, proposing 41 new buildings, 8 parking decks and new roads, about 5.9 million square feet in all, to carry out the 2001 Campus Master Plan.
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Second library task force calls for a new main library of 30,000 to 65,000 square feet
A second Library Services Task Force, appointed in January 2004, recommended building a centrally located main library of 30,000 to 65,000 square feet sized for 2025 population estimates, a southwest branch in Carrboro combining the McDougle branch and the Cybrary, and an Orange County heritage center.
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Robert Campbell petitioned Chapel Hill for bus service to the Rogers Road neighborhood
Minister Robert Campbell asked the Chapel Hill council to extend free transit service to the Rogers Road community, noting that it lacked sidewalks and sewer service and that children walked along the landfill's heavy truck route. He suggested rerouting underused Airport Road buses.
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Chapel Hill council took up how to carry out a Rogers Road small area plan
Under a 2002 resolution adopted jointly by Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, Chapel Hill had agreed to plan the residential area west of the Greene Tract around Rogers and Purefoy roads, including an affordable housing site. The manager recommended starting after four neighborhood conservation districts were finished, with the Planning Board leading.
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Chapel Hill enacts the Pine Knolls neighborhood conservation district
The council voted 9-0 to adopt Ordinance O-7 creating the Pine Knolls district, which bans new duplexes, caps floor area at 2,500 square feet and reduces front-yard parking. The Greenwood and Kings Mill/Morgan Creek districts were adopted the same night.
- 2010s
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UNC Hospitals employs about 7,000 people
Town figures show UNC Hospitals employed 6,680 full-time and 359 part-time staff in 2010, and the UNC Health Care System, with 7,964 employees, was Orange County's second-largest public employer after the university.
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Commissioners set the landfill's closing date and created the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood Task Force
On the night the Orange County commissioners voted to close the landfill on June 30, 2013, they also authorized an eight-member task force, with two members each from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, the county and RENA, to recommend how to deliver sewer service and a community center and how to guard against displacement. An interim report was due that August and a final report to the Assembly of Governments on December 6, 2012.
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Chapel Hill's comprehensive plan describes the town as a university and health care town
The Chapel Hill 2020 data summary opens with a chapter titled Chapel Hill: A University and Health Care Town, names the UNC Health Care System among the town's three largest employers, and describes its expansion beyond the main campus toward NC 54, the 15-501 corridor and a new UNC Hospitals site in Hillsborough.
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