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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–17.Back to highlights
Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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The North Carolina Railroad is chartered and built
The General Assembly chartered the North Carolina Railroad in 1849, after Senate speaker Calvin Graves cast the deciding vote. The state built the 223-mile line from Goldsboro to Charlotte between 1851 and 1856, running it through Hillsborough, and the first train ran its full length in January 1856.
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Orange County residents put up $100,000 for the North Carolina Railroad
Orange County people pledged $100,000 in 1850 toward building the North Carolina Railroad, planned to cross the state from Goldsboro through Hillsborough to Charlotte. Its first rails went down at Greensboro in 1851.
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Nancy Hilliard sells the Eagle Hotel, renamed the Union Hotel
In the early 1850s Miss Nancy Hilliard, long the students' and travelers' landlady, sold her hotel interest for $10,000 to Hugh B. Guthrie, who renamed the Eagle the Union Hotel. She went on to run the North Carolina Railroad eating house at Company Shops.
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A railroad depot is built at the Orange-Alamance line and Mebanesville grows up around it
The North Carolina Railroad put a depot on the county line in 1854, and the settlement of Mebanesville, later Mebane, soon formed there.
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North Carolina Railroad finished to Durham's Station
The railroad was completed to Durham's Station, then a single house on Dr. Bartlett Durham's plantation in Orange County, and the company gave legislators a free ride there. From then until 1882 a two-horse hack line between Chapel Hill and Durham replaced the four-horse stage to Raleigh.
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The North Carolina Railroad reaches Hillsborough
The Hillsborough Recorder of Wednesday, April 4, 1855, announced that the North Carolina Railroad was finished to the Chapel Hill Road, a few hundred yards south of town, and that passenger cars would begin running there that day. The editor cheered the end of two-day trips over muddy roads to Raleigh and costly wagoning of farm produce.
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The first through trains run on the finished North Carolina Railroad, with mail trains at Hillsborough
The North Carolina Railroad was finished on January 29, 1856, when the last rail was laid about four and a half miles west of Greensboro. Two days later the regular mail and passenger trains made their first through run from Charlotte to Goldsboro, with a westbound train due at Hillsborough each morning and an eastbound one before dawn, replacing the coach connection that had carried the Burwells' letters to their daughter Fanny in New York.
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Charles Tew chooses a site west of Hillsborough for a military academy
In late July 1858 Charles C. Tew, with Moses A. Curtis and A. S. Galliard, searched Hillsborough for a school site and settled on a 40-acre tract about a mile and a half west of town near the new North Carolina Railroad. They engaged the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and local builders John Berry and Henry Richards built the barracks and commandant's house.
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Bingham School moves from the Oaks to Mebaneville
William Bingham and Robert Bingham, sons of William James Bingham, moved the school that December to a site east of Mebane's Station on the North Carolina Railroad, after the legislature incorporated it in 1864 as a military and classical academy. The highway marker's 1865 may be when classes began at the new site.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Court strikes down the act for a state-built railroad to Chapel Hill
An 1869 plan had the state build a line from the North Carolina Railroad to Chapel Hill through commissioners, paid for with $300,000 in state bonds. When the commissioners chose Henry C. Thompson as president over Governor Holden's choice, Holden refused to sign the bonds, and in the University Railroad Company's suit against him the court held the act unconstitutional over Judge Reade's dissent.
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Robert F. Hoke obtains a charter for the Chapel Hill Iron Mountain Railroad
While the university was closed, Robert F. Hoke, owner of an iron mine north of Chapel Hill, obtained a state charter for a railroad to carry ore from Iron Mountain to the North Carolina Railroad.
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Mebaneville, the railroad village on the Orange-Alamance line, is incorporated
The settlement that grew along the North Carolina Railroad from 1854 was incorporated in 1881 and shortened its name to Mebane in 1883. Part of the town lies in Orange County.
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The Keystone Bridge Company replaces the wooden railroad bridge over the Eno at Hillsboro with an iron one
Crews of the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh began replacing the wooden railroad bridge over the Eno near the Hillsboro depot with an iron bridge, expecting to finish by August 10. Trains kept running across it at three miles an hour.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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A Southern Railway freight train wrecks at the Eno railroad bridge in Hillsboro
Eastbound freight No. 72 left the track just west of the Eno bridge; one car went over the side into the river and eleven more piled up, twisting the bridge's iron supports. No one was hurt, and mail trains crossed again the next morning.
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The Corporation Commission orders three railroad underpasses for the Durham-Greensboro highway in Orange County
Ruling on a petition from the Orange County Good Roads Commission against the Southern Railway, the Corporation Commission ordered the county to lower the Durham-Greensboro highway at three railroad crossings and the two sides to build 26-foot underpasses there. The county was to pay half to two thirds of each, and the railroad the rest, including the widening of an existing underpass.
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A freight wreck at the Occoneechee Farm siding sets a gasoline tank car burning
Three cars of a Southern freight train, one a gasoline tank car, left the track at the Occoneechee Farm siding east of Hillsboro. The tank car caught fire and burned through the night, a flour car and a lumber car burned, and passengers were transferred around the torn-up track until repairs the next afternoon.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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The last Southern Railway passenger trains run through Hillsborough
Trains 13 and 16, the daily Greensboro-Goldsboro round trip, made their final runs, ending more than a century of passenger service in Orange County. Hillsborough had been a flag stop without ticket sales for two years.
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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 1, 2026.
