Duke land purchases in Orange County

In the chronology

1. March 1925 The Mayo family's quarry land near Hillsborough is sold to Duke's land agent for $500 A deed at the Orange County courthouse records that Duke land agent Murray Jones paid the Mayo family $500 in March 1925 for land with a working stone quarry, the source of the stone for Duke's new campus. According to family accounts, George Mayo refused to sell until he was jailed and signed so his family would not go hungry. The Alliance for Historic Hillsborough: Mayo Rock Quarry
2. April 1925 Patrick L. Clayton sells his farm northwest of Hillsboro to James B. Duke's agents for $4,000 The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that Patrick L. Clayton, who had paid $200 for a 70-acre farm about a mile northwest of Hillsboro twenty years earlier, had sold it to representatives of James B. Duke for $4,000 for its building stone. Architects and builders had judged the stone suitable for the new Duke University. The Chapel Hill Weekly, April 23, 1925, p. 1 (Hillsboro Man Makes a Big Profit by Selling Rock to James B. Duke)
3. between January and mid-March 1988 Chapel Hill Town Council asks Duke University to keep Duke Forest intact After a member of the Save Duke Forest group appealed to it in January, the council adopted a resolution asking Duke to keep the forest as part of its heritage and as a scientific and environmental benefit, against an Urban Land Institute study advising Duke to open 6,000 of its 8,300 acres to homes, shops and light industry. The town saw the forest as a natural buffer between Chapel Hill, Durham and Hillsborough, and Mayor Jonathan Howes's assistant said the rural buffer was the key issue. People: Jonathan Howes The Daily Tar Heel, March 15, 1988, p. 4
4. September 4, 1991 Landfill search committee sets aside the Duke Forest site On September 4, 1991, the Orange Regional Landfill Search Committee put site 5, on Turkey Farm Road near Duke Forest north of Chapel Hill, in a reserve group with eight other sites, while seven sites went on to closer study. More than 100 residents came, many with the Coalition Against a Site Five Landfill that neighbors had formed to fight it, and cheered the move. The Daily Tar Heel, September 6, 1991, p. 3
5. January 18, 1992 Love Your Mother protests the Duke Forest landfill site in Carrboro Members of Love Your Mother, a Carrboro environmental group founded by Debi Bird, demonstrated in front of Weaver Street Market on January 18, 1992, against the Orange Regional Landfill Search Committee's choice of a Duke Forest tract off N.C. 86 north of Eubanks Road as one of four possible sites for a new landfill, and called for a "zero garbage" recycling policy instead. The Daily Tar Heel, January 21, 1992, p. 3
6. by April 28, 1993 An Elon College team maps an old homestead on a landfill candidate site in Duke Forest By April 28, 1993 an Elon College dig led by anthropologist Dawn Bodo had cleared and mapped an old homestead on the Blackwood Division of Duke Forest, one of four sites under study for a new landfill, and argued it should be spared. The Daily Tar Heel, April 28, 1993, p. 5
7. by November 2, 1994 Archaeological survey completes the third phase of Orange County's historic preservation inventory UNC's Research Laboratories of Anthropology finished a surface survey of about 400 acres, mostly in northern Orange County near the Little River and in Duke Forest, recording 151 archaeological sites, 116 of them prehistoric, and almost 3,000 artifacts from stone spear and arrow points to colonial and later pottery. The $20,000 survey, paid half by a state Department of Cultural Resources grant and half by the county, completed the third phase of the county's historic preservation program after two phases inventorying historic buildings, and its sites were to be used in county planning review. The Daily Tar Heel, November 2, 1994, p. 2
8. April 13, 1995 The Alexander Hogan Plantation site in Duke Forest joins the Study List The state archaeology branch presented the plantation site in Duke Forest on April 13, 1995. Members observed that such sites were not unique but were becoming rare, and that Duke's long ownership had kept this one undisturbed; the committee approved it unanimously. NC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register Advisory Committee agendas, minutes and approved lists, p. 635
9. January 10, 1996 State reviewers back the Hogan Plantation site nomination over Orange County's objection After a September 12, 1995 hearing, the Orange County Historic Preservation Commission found the Duke Forest site ineligible, and the county commissioners agreed, while the tract was under study for a new county landfill. That kept the nomination from the committee in October 1995 until Duke Forest appealed. On January 10, 1996 the committee heard the case, one member questioned whether landfill politics had shaped the county's finding, and it approved the nomination unanimously for the Keeper to decide. NC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register Advisory Committee agendas, minutes and approved lists, p. 669
10. 1996–1998 Duke Forest closes and salvages timber after Hurricane Fran Fran brought down more than 1,400 trees across 35 miles of Duke Forest roads, damaged the Bobby Ross Jr. Memorial Picnic Shelter and a research tower in the Blackwood Division, and kept parts of the forest closed for three to six months. A helicopter crew salvaged about 800,000 board feet from 163 acres within two weeks, and salvage through summer 1998 recovered 2 million board feet from 540 acres, worth about $260,000. Duke Forest: Hurricane Fran: Looking Back after 25 Years

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