Chronology

Occaneechi Town occupation on the Eno

The Fredricks archaeological site near Hillsborough is associated with Occaneechi Town and the Fredricks phase.

Creation of Orange County and Hillsborough

The General Assembly created Orange County in 1752 from parts of Granville, Johnston and Bladen counties. William Churton laid out its county seat in 1754 where trading paths crossed the Eno. The town was called Orange, then Corbin Town, then Childsburgh from 1759, and took the name Hillsborough in 1766.

The Regulator crisis

Orange County farmers organized in 1766 against high fees, taxes and dishonest county officers, calling a meeting at Maddock's Mill that October. Protest turned violent at the Hillsborough court in September 1770 and ended with the Regulators' defeat at Alamance on May 16, 1771 and the hanging of six at Hillsborough on June 19.

How Orange County’s boundaries changed

Between 1771 and 1777 the legislature carved Guilford, Wake, Chatham and Caswell counties wholly or partly out of Orange, then took Alamance from its west in 1849 and Durham from its east in 1881. Records filed under Orange County before those dates can therefore concern places that now lie in other counties.

Third Provincial Congress meets at Hillsborough

The Third Provincial Congress met in Hillsborough from August 20 to September 10, 1775.

People: Cornelius Harnett · William Hooper · Samuel Johnston · Waightstill Avery · James Davis · Memucan Hunt

General Assembly holds its August 1778 session at Hillsborough

The second session of the 1778 General Assembly met at Hillsborough, elected Whitmell Hill and Thomas Burke as additional delegates to the Continental Congress, and authorized 850,000 pounds in bills of credit to pay the state's war debts. The House adjourned to meet next at Halifax in January 1779.

People: Thomas Benbury · Allen Jones

Cornwallis occupies Hillsborough

After driving Nathanael Greene's army across the Dan River, Lord Cornwallis reached Hillsborough on February 20, 1781, raised the royal standard and issued a proclamation calling loyalists to join him. Short of food and forage, and told that Greene had recrossed the Dan, he left on February 26, crossing the Haw toward Alamance Creek.

People: Charles Cornwallis · Nathanael Greene

David Fanning raids Hillsborough and captures Governor Burke

Fanning’s Loyalists captured Governor Thomas Burke during a surprise raid on Hillsborough.

Part of David Fanning’s raid on Hillsborough, September 1781

People: David Fanning · Thomas Burke

Indian families from Virginia settle the Texas community in northern Orange County

Charles Whitmore, Jesse Whitmore and Jacob Jeffries appear on the Orange County return used for the 1790 federal census, which was compiled from a tax list of 1787. Families of the same names had moved southwest from Greensville County in Virginia, and by 1820 the settlement later called Texas, or Pleasant Grove, was intact, with the Corn and Jeffries families holding tracts of several hundred acres.

Hillsborough Convention declines to ratify the Constitution

Meeting at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, delegates defeated a motion to ratify the Constitution 184 to 84 on August 1, 1788. On August 2 they voted to neither ratify nor reject it until a declaration of rights and amendments went before Congress.

People: Samuel Johnston · Richard Dobbs Spaight · Willie Jones · James Iredell

The founding of the university and Chapel Hill

The General Assembly chartered the university on December 11, 1789. Meeting at Hillsborough in August 1792, the trustees voted to build within fifteen miles of Cyprett's Bridge, and that November their commissioners chose New Hope Chapel Hill. The Old East cornerstone was laid October 12, 1793, and the first student, Hinton James, arrived February 12, 1795.

The county tax list counts 36 white polls and 82 taxable enslaved people in Hillsborough town

Orange County's 1790 tax list returned 2,272 polls and 406,106 acres across its eight districts, with a separate list for Hillsborough town showing 36 white polls against 82 black polls. William Hooper was charged for 22 of them, John Taylor for 10 and Francis Childs for 5.

Fire destroys the greater part of Hillsborough

A letter written at Hillsborough early in March 1790 reported that the greatest part of the town had been destroyed by fire a few days earlier, news that reached New Bern by March 18 and was printed in the State Gazette of North Carolina on March 27. The district and county courthouse was among the buildings lost, the courts moved into a private house, and the General Assembly ordered a replacement built on the same lot before the year was out.

Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies

Hillsborough Academy reopened under Andrew Flinn in 1801 and grew under William J. Bingham, who left in 1844 to open his own school at the Oaks. The Burwell School for girls ran from 1837 to 1857. The Nash and Kollock School and Hillsborough Military Academy opened in 1859; the military academy sent its cadets home in May 1865.

Suit by William Kirkland and others leads to the sale of Hannah and her children

Legal proceedings brought by William Kirkland, Catlett Campbell, Jacob Greer and Isaac Mordecai against Robert Bell placed Hannah and her children Jenny and David in the hands of the sheriff. Sheriff Samuel Turrentine sold the three at public auction at the Hillsborough Market House to Duncan Cameron for 200 pounds.

People: Duncan Cameron · William Kirkland

Polly Burke helps organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

In September 1816 Mary W. Burke joined eight other people and the Rev. John Knox Witherspoon to organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church, which acquired the town's brick church built in 1810. She rented pew 13 on the first pew list and supported the church for the next eighteen years.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

George Moses Horton begins selling poems to UNC students

By about age twenty, George Moses Horton, enslaved on a Chatham County farm, was carrying fruit to the UNC campus on Sundays, and students began paying him to compose love poems and acrostics. His first printed poem appeared in April 1829, the year The Hope of Liberty was published.

The Hillsborough Recorder begins publication

Dennis Heartt began publishing the weekly Hillsborough Recorder in February 1820, at three dollars a year. The paper ran until 1879, and its surviving issues are a main record of nineteenth-century Hillsborough and Orange County.

Part of The Hillsborough Recorder begins publication, 1820

People: Dennis Heartt

Thomas Ruffin issues the State v. Mann decision

Thomas Ruffin of Hillsborough, newly seated on the North Carolina Supreme Court, wrote the opinion in State v. Mann, overturning the conviction of John Mann of Edenton for shooting Lydia, an enslaved woman he had hired, as she fled a whipping. Ruffin held that a master's power must be absolute, and abolitionists later cited the ruling widely.

People: Thomas Ruffin · Lydia

Burwell School for young women operates

Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell operated their Hillsborough school for girls from 1837 to 1857.

Part of The Burwell School and the Burwell household

People: Margaret Anna Burwell · Robert Armistead Burwell

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.

Elizabeth Keckly purchases freedom for herself and her son

Elizabeth Keckly purchased freedom for herself and her son in St. Louis, after earlier enslavement in Hillsborough.

Part of Elizabeth Keckly in Hillsborough

People: George Kirkland

Orange County during the Civil War

Students left Chapel Hill to enlist from late April 1861, and Hillsborough Military Academy's founder, Charles Tew, left in May to command a Confederate regiment. The university stayed open as enrollment fell to about a dozen. Federal cavalry held Chapel Hill from April 16 to May 3, 1865, as many newly freed people left town or joined the army.

Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation

After emancipation, Black residents of Orange County built their own institutions. Chapel Hill's First Baptist Church formed in September 1865; Job Berry and Philadelphia Quakers opened Hillsborough's freedmen's school in the old courthouse on June 5, 1866; Black residents bought land for a Chapel Hill school in 1866; and St. Paul AME bought its church lot in 1878.

Freedpeople register their marriages in Orange County

An 1866 state law declared formerly enslaved couples who had lived together as husband and wife legally married and required them to register their unions, most often with the county register of deeds. Orange County’s cohabitation records from that registration survive at the State Archives and are digitized in North Carolina Digital Collections.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 9 events

Black men vote in Orange County's first Reconstruction election

Under the 1867 Reconstruction Acts, Black men registered and voted alongside white men in the November 19-20, 1867 election for a state constitutional convention. Orange County elected E. M. Holt and J. W. Graham as delegates.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 9 events

Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County

Six people are documented as lynched in Orange County: Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, Daniel Morrow, Wright Malone and Cyrus Guy in 1869, and Manly McCauley in 1898. In September 2022 the county commissioners apologized for racial-terror lynchings and approved markers, citing five cases without naming the victims.

People: Cyrus Guy

Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow and Daniel Morrow are lynched

Early on August 7, 1869, about 100 disguised white men took Washington Morrow and his brother Nelson from the Hillsborough jail, where they were held on barn-burning charges, and shot Washington as they fled; he died of the wound. On October 14 a mob hanged their father, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, and their uncle, Daniel Morrow.

Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 3 events

People: Washington Morrow · Daniel Morrow · Jefferson Morrow

Orange County in the Kirk–Holden War

Governor Holden named Orange County in his October 1869 warning about Klan violence, Hillsborough men were named in a Klan plot against Senator T. M. Shoffner, and Kirk's militia arrested Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough in August 1870. Orange men Frederick N. Strudwick, William A. Graham and John W. Graham then helped bring, prosecute and decide Holden's impeachment.

People: William W. Holden · Josiah Turner Jr. · Frederick N. Strudwick · William A. Graham

John and Mary Jane Pope build their farm near Cedar Grove

John S. Pope, a Confederate captain, and his wife Mary Jane McDade Pope built a two-story I-house on land she inherited from her father's estate in 1869; it was likely finished by 1874, when her brother's share brought the tract to about 73 acres. Tobacco was the farm's main cash crop, and its oldest surviving barn dates to about 1875.

Subject: John S. Pope Farm

UNC reopens

The university resumed classes on Monday, September 6, 1875, after more than four years closed, with Charles Phillips as chairman of the faculty, and held a public celebration on September 15. Kemp P. Battle, then secretary of the trustees, was elected president in 1876.

From West End to Carrboro: railroad, mills, and a new town

In 1882 a university railroad spur ended a mile west of Chapel Hill, and the settlement of West End grew around its boxcar depot. Thomas Lloyd opened a gin and grist mill in 1883 and the Alberta Cotton Mill in 1899, which Julian Carr's Durham Hosiery bought in 1909. Incorporated as Venable in 1911, the town became Carrboro in 1913.

E. H. Pogue & Co. hold the opening sale at the Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse

The Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse, run by E. H. Pogue & Co., held its opening sale on Tuesday, January 5, 1886, and the Observer reported a heavy break with good prices. Three days earlier Pogue and fourteen other men had incorporated the Orange County Tobacco Association to buy and sell leaf tobacco.

Sallie Walker Stockard becomes UNC's first woman graduate

Sallie Walker Stockard, a Guilford College graduate, entered UNC's senior class in the fall of 1897, the first year the university admitted women. She became the first woman to graduate from UNC when the class of 1898 received its degrees on June 1, 1898, and she earned a master's degree there in 1900.

Manly McCauley is lynched near Carrboro

Manly McCauley, an 18-year-old Black farmhand, left Milton Brewer's farm west of Chapel Hill with Brewer's wife on October 26, 1898. A posse caught them beyond Jonesboro, and on the way back masked men took McCauley from the officer holding him and hanged him. His body was found on November 6, about three miles west of Chapel Hill.

Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 3 events

People: Manly McCauley

Elizabeth Cotten composes Freight Train

At about age eleven, growing up near the railroad tracks in the settlement that became Carrboro, Elizabeth Cotten wrote "Freight Train." She played a right-handed guitar upside down, and the song became a folk standard after Folkways released her recording in 1958.

Silent Sam

On June 2, 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy and UNC alumni dedicated a Confederate soldier statue in McCorkle Place, and Julian Carr's dedication speech boasted of whipping a Black woman. The monument drew decades of protest until demonstrators pulled it down on August 20, 2018.

Segregated schooling and the rise of Lincoln and Central High schools

In 1916 the Chapel Hill school district bought Louis Hackney's school and renamed it Orange County Training School, later Lincoln High. Hillsborough's Black high school opened in 1936 and became Central High in 1948. Desegregation closed Lincoln as a high school in 1966, discarding its name and colors, and after 1968 walkouts Central's students moved to Orange High.

The Carolina Playmakers are organized

Frederick H. Koch organized the Carolina Playmakers at UNC.

Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 5 events

People: Frederick H. Koch

Influenza epidemic strikes Chapel Hill

Spanish influenza swept the University in early October 1918, putting the campus and its student soldiers under a three-week quarantine. By October 23 about 300 students had been ill and three had died, and President Edward Kidder Graham died of influenza and pneumonia on October 26.

Part of The 1918 influenza pandemic in Orange County

The University of North Carolina Press is founded

On June 12, 1922, university librarian Louis Round Wilson, nine other faculty members and three trustees founded the University of North Carolina Press, the first university press in the South. Its first book, William C. Coker's study of water molds, appeared in 1923, and William T. Couch became director in 1932.

Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 5 events

People: William T. Couch

Ellis Store and post office opens

Allen A. Ellis built a new crossroads store.

The Carolina Inn is built

John Sprunt Hill built the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill.

People: John Sprunt Hill

Census counts tenants on about a third of Orange County farms

Tenants operated 643 of 1,870 Orange County farms in 1930 (34.4 percent), 718 of 1,956 in 1935 (36.7 percent) and 687 of 2,043 in 1940 (33.6 percent). Of the 1940 tenants, 514 were share tenants and croppers.

Water for the towns: University Lake, the 1976–77 drought, and OWASA

The University dammed Morgan Creek in 1932 to create University Lake. Droughts in 1968 and 1976–77 forced rationing and purchases from Durham, and on February 16, 1977 the Orange Water and Sewer Authority, organized by the county and both towns, took over the university and town systems. A long fight over a Cane Creek reservoir followed.

Hillsborough builds the Confederate Memorial Library

Federal relief crews began a new library on Churton Street in Hillsborough in December 1933, with local money, including $7,000 from the Hillsborough United Daughters of the Confederacy, paying for materials. The cornerstone of the Confederate Memorial Public Library was laid on July 13, 1934, and the building became the Orange County Historical Museum in 1983.

The Texas community asks the Bureau of Indian Affairs for an Indian school

Clayton Jeffries, Charles Will Jeffries and others retained a lawyer, drew up a list of Indian families, made contact with the Indian community in Person County that already had a state sponsored school, and wrote to Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier seeking a federal school for their children. A bureau agent visited and reported the families to be Indian, and the bureau's letters called the settlement an Indian community, but no assistance was ever given.

District health department holds midwife classes across Orange County

Classes for midwives were held at Efland and Hillsboro and began for those in and near Chapel Hill at the health department offices, with attendance required before a permit to practice would be issued. Health officer W. P. Richardson said 17 percent of births in the county were attended by midwives, against 31 percent statewide.

Navy Pre-Flight School operates at UNC

Commissioned at UNC in May 1942, the U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School trained 18,700 cadets before it was decommissioned on October 15, 1945. Cadets ate in Lenoir Hall and drilled in a Navy-built armory that opened in 1943. George H. W. Bush trained there as a cadet, Gerald Ford taught there, and Ted Williams played on its baseball team.

Part of The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945 · 3 events

People: Ted Williams

The Navy B-1 Band serves at Chapel Hill

The B-1 Band, 44 Black musicians sworn in at Raleigh on May 27, 1942 as the first African Americans to serve in the Navy at general rank, played for the Navy Pre-Flight School at UNC from July 1942 to April 1944. Barred from campus housing, they lived in the new Black community center on Roberson Street, now the Hargraves Center.

Part of The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945 · 3 events

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.

Part of Journey of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill, 1947 · 2 events

People: Bayard Rustin · George Houser · Igal Roodenko · Joseph A. Felmet

Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough

Bill France and four partners chartered a company in September 1947 to build a one-mile dirt oval by the old Occoneechee Farm, and it opened in June 1948. The track held a race in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season in 1949, was renamed Orange Speedway in 1954, and closed after Richard Petty won its last race on September 15, 1968.

Hyconeechee Regional Library is established

The three county library systems incorporated as one region to enlarge book collections, run a shared bookmobile and provide trained supervision. The regional board held its second meeting on September 13, 1948 at the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsboro, with Sydney Green of Orange County as president and Mrs. Douglas Davis as regional librarian.

Morehead Planetarium is dedicated

Morehead Planetarium was dedicated at UNC on May 10, 1949.

People: John Motley Morehead · John Motley Morehead III

Orange County Negro Public Library dedicates its own building

About 150 people attended an open house on May 27, 1951 dedicating the Orange County Negro Public Library's own building in Hillsborough, a structure bought from Camp Butner and put up with volunteer labor. Begun in 1942 by Marinda McPherson, the library had opened to the public in 1949 and now held more than 3,000 books.

Part of The Orange County Negro Public Library and the struggle for equal library service, 1936–1960s

Desegregating the University of North Carolina

After a 1951 federal court decision in McKissick v. Carmichael, five Black students began law school classes at UNC on June 22, 1951. In September 1955, again under court order, LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon of Durham registered as the university's first Black undergraduates.

North Carolina Memorial Hospital opens

North Carolina Memorial Hospital opened in September 1952 with the admission of its first patients, as the core of the new University Medical Center. Its opening allowed the UNC School of Medicine to grow from a two-year program into a four-year school.

Part of North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the medical center, from 1952

WUNC-TV begins broadcasting

WUNC-TV began broadcasting from Chapel Hill on January 8, 1955.

UNC men’s basketball wins the 1957 NCAA national championship

UNC defeated Kansas, 54–53 in triple overtime, to win the national title.

People: Frank McGuire

Chapel Hill Public Library opens

Chapel Hill's first public library held its formal opening on December 15, 1958 in the east wing of the Hill House on West Franklin Street, with about 4,500 books, 2,000 of them lent by state and regional libraries. It moved to its own building at 523 East Franklin Street in 1967 and to Pritchard Park in 1994.

Research Triangle Park and Orange County's growth

The Research Triangle Foundation, formed in 1959, ran the research park planned between Durham and Raleigh around UNC, N.C. State and Duke. That November Orange County commissioners said the park would bring the county mainly new residents and school costs rather than taxable industry, and began discussing county-wide zoning.

Chapel Hill freedom movement

Nine Lincoln High students began Chapel Hill's sit-ins at Colonial Drug on February 28, 1960. Through 1963 and 1964 Black residents and UNC students picketed, marched and sat in, and held a Holy Week fast at the post office, but the aldermen narrowly rejected a public accommodations ordinance and many businesses stayed segregated until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Desegregating the Chapel Hill and Carrboro schools

After the school board refused in 1959 to admit ten-year-old Stanley Vickers to Carrboro Elementary, his parents sued, and their 1961 win in federal court set the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools on the course to desegregation. In 1966 all-Black Lincoln High merged into Chapel Hill High, and Lincoln's name, colors and mascot were left behind.

Speaker Ban controversy

The General Assembly passed the Speaker Ban on June 26, 1963, barring known Communists and people who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment from speaking on state campuses. In March 1966 Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker spoke to UNC students from the Franklin Street side of the wall, and a federal court struck the law down on February 19, 1968.

The Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley forms

Residents who had begun organizing in 1965 against plans to dam the Eno for a water-supply reservoir formed the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley on October 14, 1966. Led by Margaret and Holger Nygard, it began the campaign that preserved the river corridor in Durham and Orange counties.

Part of Saving the Eno · 5 events

People: Margaret Nygard · Holger Nygard

Black student activism at UNC

Black students founded the Black Student Movement at UNC in November 1967. It presented 23 demands to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson in December 1968, backed the cafeteria workers' strike of 1969, and in the 1990s pressed for a freestanding Black cultural center, which opened as the Sonja Haynes Stone Center in 2004.

Braxton Foushee becomes Carrboro’s first Black alderman

Braxton Foushee was elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1969, the first Black member of the town's governing board, and served until 1981. He pressed for paved roads and sidewalks in Black neighborhoods and counted bringing bus service to Carrboro as his proudest achievement.

Part of Carrboro’s Black political firsts · 2 events

People: Braxton Foushee

Chapel Hill and Carrboro music scene

Cat's Cradle opened in a small basement club near the UNC campus in 1969 and, after several moves, settled in Carrboro in 1993. With Merge Records, founded in Chapel Hill in 1989, and bands such as Superchunk and Polvo, the local scene drew national press in the early 1990s as a possible "next Seattle."

UNC food workers' strike

On February 23, 1969 food service workers at UNC's Lenoir Hall left their counters and sat down at the cafeteria tables, and by the next morning nearly 100 dining hall employees had refused to report for work. The strike ended on March 21 when the University agreed to raise the hourly minimum from $1.60 to $1.80, pay roughly $180,000 in back wages, and appoint a Black supervisor.

Part of UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 · 5 events

People: Mary Smith · Elizabeth Brooks · J. Carlyle Sitterson · Robert W. Scott · Julius L. Chambers

Howard Lee is elected mayor of Chapel Hill

Howard N. Lee defeated Roland Giduz by about 400 votes on May 6, 1969, in the largest turnout for a Chapel Hill election to that date, becoming the town's first Black mayor. He was the first African American elected mayor of a predominantly white Southern town since Reconstruction.

Part of Howard Lee’s election as mayor of Chapel Hill, 1969

People: Howard N. Lee

UNC foodworkers strike a second time

About 250 of UNC's 275 cafeteria workers, organized as the UNC Non-Academic Employees Union, struck SAGA Food Services on November 7, 1969 over pay, job reclassification, and the firing of workers for union activity. They voted on November 21 to affiliate with AFSCME, and the strike was settled in December after Ralph Abernathy visited the strikers and Black students from across the state threatened to converge on the campus.

Part of UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 · 5 events

People: J. Carlyle Sitterson

James Cates is killed outside the UNC Student Union

James Lewis Cates Jr., 22, a Black Chapel Hill resident, was stabbed outside the UNC Student Union shortly before 2 a.m. during an all-night dance, in a clash with members of Durham's Storm Troopers motorcycle gang, and died at North Carolina Memorial Hospital. Three white men charged in his death were acquitted by an all-white jury in 1971.

Part of Killing of James Cates, 1970

Rogers Road environmental justice

In 1972 officials placed the county landfill on Eubanks Road beside the historically Black Rogers Road community, promising it would run about ten years. It was expanded instead and did not close until 2013, and residents' organizing through the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association helped win a sewer line for the neighborhood, completed in 2019.

Eno River State Park is created

After years of citizen opposition to damming the Eno for a reservoir, Governor James Holshouser accepted the first tracts for Eno River State Park in June 1973, including 90 acres donated by Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Bernheim. The first 1,000 acres opened to the public in 1975 along the river in Orange and Durham counties.

Part of Saving the Eno · 5 events

People: Margaret Nygard

The Carolina Gay Association forms

Students who had met weekly since February 1974 as the Gay Awareness Rap Group won recognition from UNC's Dean of Student Affairs in early September 1974 and took the name Carolina Gay Association. The group met in Craige dormitory and in 1976 sponsored the first Southeastern Gay Conference.

Part of LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s · 4 events

Severe drought creates a local water crisis

A drought from August 1976 to January 1977 forced Chapel Hill and UNC to buy more water from Durham, ban unnecessary water use and cut campus services. By August 1977 University Lake was lower still, and the new Orange Water and Sewer Authority kept conservation rules and used federal drought aid to buy Durham water.

Part of Water for the towns: University Lake, the 1976–77 drought, and OWASA · 3 events

Bob Drakeford is elected mayor of Carrboro

Robert "Bob" Drakeford, a Carrboro alderman since 1975 and a Carrboro Community Coalition candidate, won the mayor's race on November 8, 1977, with 57 percent of the vote over John Boone. He was the town's first Black mayor and served until 1983.

Part of Carrboro’s Black political firsts · 2 events

UNC women’s soccer builds a national dynasty

Anson Dorrance, the program's head coach from its first varsity season in 1979 through 2023, led the Tar Heels to the 1981 AIAW national title and 21 NCAA titles, and his successor Damon Nahas added the 2024 NCAA title, for 23 national championships in all through the 2025 season. UNC won 22 of the 43 NCAA tournaments held from 1982 through 2024, and its teams went 103 consecutive games without a loss from 1986 to 1990.

UNC men’s basketball wins the 1982 NCAA national championship

UNC defeated Georgetown, 63–62, to win the national title.

People: Dean Smith · James Worthy · Michael Jordan

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.

Joe Herzenberg wins election to the Chapel Hill Town Council

Joe Herzenberg placed third in the four-seat Town Council race at the municipal election of November 3, 1987, with 3,308 votes, behind Nancy Preston and Roosevelt Wilkerson, and said he was the first openly gay elected official in the history of North Carolina. He was sworn in at the Council's organizational meeting on December 7, 1987, with his neighbor Lightning Brown administering the oath.

Part of LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s · 4 events

People: Joseph A. Herzenberg

LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro

Joe Herzenberg's election to the Chapel Hill Town Council in November 1987 made him North Carolina's first openly gay elected official. Carrboro created a domestic partnership registry in September 1994 and Chapel Hill followed in 1995, and in November 1995 Carrboro elected Mike Nelson, the state's first openly gay mayor.

Students campaign for a freestanding Black Cultural Center

After Sonja Haynes Stone died in 1991, students, faculty and Black athletes at UNC pressed for a freestanding Black Cultural Center named for her. Following marches in September 1992, Chancellor Paul Hardin endorsed a freestanding building on October 15, 1992, and the trustees approved a site in 1993.

Part of Black student activism at UNC · 2 events

People: Sonja Haynes Stone

UNC Housekeepers organize for pay and respect

UNC housekeepers formed the Housekeepers Association in 1991 and brought a class-action discrimination suit against the University over pay, advancement and treatment. Led by Marsha Tinnen and Barbara Prear, they signed a settlement with UNC on November 26, 1996, that brought raises, a career training program and monthly meetings with administrators.

Part of UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 1996 · 5 events

The Chapel Hill sound gains national attention

Spin's December 1992 feature "Robbing the Cradle," its title a play on the Cat's Cradle, looked at Polvo and other local bands as record scouts hunted for the next big thing after Seattle. By January 1993 the Daily Tar Heel counted about six publications calling Chapel Hill the next Seattle, and Details and Time followed that year.

Part of Chapel Hill and Carrboro music scene

UNC women’s basketball wins the 1994 NCAA national championship

Charlotte Smith’s last-second three-pointer gave UNC a 60–59 victory over Louisiana Tech.

People: Sylvia Hatchell

WXYC makes the first internet radio simulcast

WXYC streamed its radio broadcast over the internet on November 7, 1994.

People: Paul Jones

Hurricane Fran strikes Orange County

Hurricane Fran came ashore on the night of September 5, 1996 and crossed to the Triangle overnight. In Chapel Hill winds topped 70 mph, falling trees caused about 29,000 power outages and UNC cancelled classes, and the Eno at Hillsborough hit a record flow. No one in Orange County was killed.

Part of Hurricane Fran, September 1996

Occoneechee Mountain becomes a State Natural Area

At the urging of the Eno River Association and The Nature Conservancy, the state began buying land on Occoneechee Mountain just south of Hillsborough, with the Conservancy purchasing 96 acres for the state. The 124-acre Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area was dedicated on July 20, 1999, with a blessing from an Occaneechi tribal member.

Part of Saving the Eno · 5 events

North Carolina recognizes the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation

Following the 2001 appeals ruling, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation became the eighth tribe officially recognized by the State of North Carolina through the Commission of Indian Affairs.

The Sonja Haynes Stone Center celebrates its grand opening

After more than a decade of organizing, the freestanding Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History opened in Coker Woods with a four-day celebration. A Friday candlelight procession from the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery preceded Saturday's dedication by Chancellor James Moeser before more than 500 guests.

Part of The movement for a freestanding Black Cultural Center, 1991–1993 · 2 events

People: Sonja Haynes Stone

Refugees from Burma begin arriving in Orange County in larger numbers

All 55 refugee direct arrivals recorded in Orange County in fiscal year 2006-2007 came from Burma. A second resettlement agency, the Triangle office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, opened.

Eve Carson, UNC’s Student Body President, is killed

Eve Marie Carson, 22, UNC's student body president and a Morehead-Cain Scholar from Athens, Georgia, was abducted from her Chapel Hill home early on March 5, 2008, robbed and shot on Hillcrest Road near campus. Demario Atwater pleaded guilty in 2010, and a Hillsborough jury convicted Laurence Lovette on December 20, 2011.

Orange County Main Library opens on Margaret Lane

The county's new 23,500-square-foot Main Library at 137 West Margaret Lane in Hillsborough held its grand opening on January 8, 2010, after planning that began with a task force in 2000 and a groundbreaking in April 2008. It added a teen center, a 90-person meeting room and a local history area.

Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha are killed in Chapel Hill

On February 10, 2015, neighbor Craig Hicks shot and killed Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, in the couple's Chapel Hill condominium. Hicks pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in June 2019 and received three consecutive life sentences without parole.

COVID-19 transforms Orange County

Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro declared states of emergency on March 13, 2020, and the county and its three towns ordered residents to stay home from March 27. UNC moved undergraduate classes online in August 2020 after campus clusters. The county emergency, extended more than a dozen times, expired on May 1, 2022.

Part of COVID-19 in Orange County, 2020–2022 · 2 events

Zijie Yan, a UNC professor, is killed on campus

On August 28, 2023, Zijie Yan, an associate professor, was shot and killed in UNC's Caudill Labs, and the campus locked down for about three hours. Graduate student Tailei Qi was arrested that afternoon and charged with first-degree murder; the case had not come to trial by March 2026.

Drakeford Library Complex opens

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.

Tropical Storm Chantal floods Orange County

Chantal dropped up to 10 inches of rain on Orange County on the night of July 6, 2025. Chapel Hill crews made more than 50 water rescues around Camelot Village and Eastgate Crossing, Carrboro's Weatherhill Pointe flooded, and the Eno at Hillsborough set a record crest on July 7. The county declared an emergency that day.