Storyline · 1972–1994
Chapel Hill's Recreation Department started the Apple Chill Fair in April 1972, and in 1974 it ended with a street fair on Franklin Street. By 1977 a fall street fair, Festifall, was held there too. After Apple Chill crowds reached 25,000 in 1979, the Town Council limited sellers at both fairs to Orange County residents and moved to curb drinking, and that fall's Festifall had half as many booths. Both fairs went on filling Franklin Street through the 1980s. After rain canceled the 1989 Festifall and West End merchants held a fair of their own, the council moved Festifall to West Franklin Street in 1990 and kept it there in 1991. After gunfire on West Franklin Street followed the 1993 Apple Chill, the town added police, kept the spring fair on East Franklin Street and drew about 30,000 people in 1994 with few arrests.
Chapel Hill's first Apple Chill Fair, conceived in February 1972 by the Recreation Department's Teen Planning Committee and run by volunteers, opened on April 23 with a UNC band concert in Polk Place and ran a week of open-air concerts, a crafts bazaar and carnival at the Municipal Building, a sidewalk cafe, a bicycle parade, a costume ball and a family field day at Umstead Park. Mayor Howard Lee proclaimed the week and the Board of Aldermen endorsed it. On April 21, 1974 police closed Franklin Street between Columbia and Henderson streets for a street fair that ended that year's week-long Apple Chill, and nearly 500 people browsed merchants' and artisans' stalls and heard local bands and gospel groups. On April 17, 1977 Apple Chill, organized by Shirley Crawford, drew about 25,000 people to Franklin Street with some 300 booths, up from 210 the year before; the Daily Tar Heel called it the biggest in the festival's history. By October 1977 the Parks and Recreation Department was also holding an annual fall street fair on Franklin Street, Festifall, with crafts, food and music; the October 1978 fair, with craft booths, cloggers and dance troupes, was its fifth. Crowds at Apple Chill again reached 25,000 in the spring of 1979, with traffic jams, heavy drinking and indecent behavior, and on July 23 the Town Council adopted a resolution aimed at cutting outside commercial vendors and curbing alcohol at both fairs, requiring craftsmen and vendors to be Orange County residents; a proposal to hold the fairs when the University was not in session was dropped. Festifall on October 7 drew about 5,000 people to Franklin Street, fewer than the year before, with 150 booths instead of 300 and extra police on duty.
On April 20, 1980 Apple Chill filled Franklin Street with crafts, food, cloggers, jugglers and puppet shows, but for the first time only Orange County residents and local service groups could sell, under the council's rule of the year before; the Daily Tar Heel found fewer exhibits and a smaller crowd than in past years. For Festifall on October 5 Franklin Street was closed between Henderson and Columbia streets from 1 to 5:30 p.m. for more than 150 booths from about 30 community organizations and craftspeople, with a juggler, cloggers, a string band and a UNC lacrosse exhibition. Festifall on October 4, 1981 closed the street from Columbia Street to the Morehead Planetarium, with music, dance and clogging groups, craft sellers and demonstrations, the town's oldest fire truck and the county library's bookmobile. On October 2, 1983 it ran on East Franklin Street between Columbia Street and Graham Memorial, with about 150 booths, 40 nonprofit groups and stage acts planned and a new WCHL-Fowler's chili cook-off for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro United Way. At Festifall on October 7, 1984, a five-hour fair of artists, craftsmen, food booths and bands, people could register to vote in the post office, and the Orange County Republican Party fingerprinted 87 children for a missing-children registry. On October 6, 1985 the fair filled parts of Franklin and Henderson streets, with WCHL's third annual chili cook-off for the United Way. Thousands came to Apple Chill on April 20, 1986, on Franklin Street between Columbia Street and the Morehead Building, with crafts booths, public service tables, clogging groups, the Chapel Hill Barbershop Chorus and other performers on two stages. At Apple Chill on April 17, 1988, with booths from Columbia Street to the Morehead Planetarium lot, causes shared the street with crafts: Neighborhoods Against Pittsboro Street Extension, the Coalition for Alternatives to Shearon Harris, peace groups and the American Freedom Coalition had booths, county commissioner candidates Moses Carey, Don Wilhoit and Ted Latta campaigned, and Mayors Jonathan Howes and Eleanor Kinnaird sat in Amnesty International's mock jail collecting letters for political prisoners.
Rain canceled Festifall on October 1, 1989, and on Sunday, November 5 merchants held a smaller West End Street Fair on West Franklin Street, with about 160 vendors invited and T-shirt sales for Habitat for Humanity; the council had agreed to close the street, though Howes and Julie Andresen preferred a parking lot. On February 26, 1990, as the Downtown Commission urged, the council voted 7 to 1 to hold that year's Festifall on West Franklin Street instead of East Franklin; Parks and Recreation director Mike Loveman said the town might alternate the fair between the two ends of the street, and some vendors objected over parking and safety. Between 18,000 and 20,000 people came to Festifall on West Franklin Street on October 7, moved there to bring business to the west end, with 200 booths, a WCHL chili cook-off for the United Way and gospel, bluegrass and jazz music; vendors said sales were slow and blamed fall break and the economy. On February 25, 1991, after merchants and past participants favored the location in a Parks and Recreation survey, the council kept Festifall on West Franklin Street for October 6 and set Apple Chill, with 160 booths, for April 21 on East Franklin Street. Rain forced the town to cancel that Apple Chill, its first rainout, the Daily Tar Heel said, and Parks and Recreation moved it to April 28.
About 25,000 people came to the 21st Apple Chill on Franklin Street on April 18, 1993. Around 7 p.m., after it ended, automatic weapons were fired in the 200 block of West Franklin Street before a crowd of more than 2,000, wounding at least two people; police made four arrests and noted violent crowds at the end of Apple Chill or Festifall for the fourth year running, and Mayor Ken Broun called the shooting coincidental to the fair. On June 14 the council set the 1994 Apple Chill for April 10, a week earlier, rather than move it out of April as the Bicentennial Committee had asked. At the 22nd Festifall on West Franklin Street on October 3 about 150 artists exhibited and 30 police officers patrolled, and no violence was reported. On February 14, 1994 the council turned down Town Manager Cal Horton's proposal to move Apple Chill to West Franklin Street, where police said they could give better security, after the Rev. John Manley of First Baptist Church spoke for five West Franklin churches whose Sunday services the fair would disrupt; Festifall stayed on West Franklin. About 30,000 people came to Apple Chill on April 10, with more than 200 vendors and over 25 acts on five stages, some in the new park on the Rosemary Street parking deck, and police reported three arrests in the crowd afterward.
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Jonathan Howes, a former mayor of Chapel Hill who served in Governor Hunt's cabinet and later worked in the UNC chancellor's office on urban planning, gave this illustrated talk on the past and future of the Chapel Hill campus. Cassette, 1998.
Twelve essays by novelist Daphne Athas (1923-2020) on the Chapel Hill she knew across the twentieth century. Subjects include Carrboro as 'the Paris of the Piedmont', philosopher Horace Williams, Betty Smith writing in Chapel Hill, Junius Scales, Ab Abernethy and the Intimate Bookshop, Richard Wright's visit, and a set of Chapel Hill murders. Published 2010, 243 pages with illustrations.
Kemp Plummer Battle's memoir, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 296 pages with plates and portraits. Battle, a lawyer, state treasurer and president of the university from 1876 to 1891, recalls North Carolina manners, customs and public life across the nineteenth century, with Chapel Hill and the university's reopening after Reconstruction at the center.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1946), The Journal of Southern History (1946).
Hope Summerell Chamberlain's life and letters of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825 to 1908), published in 1926, which doubles as a picture of Chapel Hill and the university in the nineteenth century. It runs 325 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Robert Burton House, later chancellor of the University of North Carolina, recalls Chapel Hill and the campus in his student years from 1912 to 1916. A memoir published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1959, 216 pages with illustrations and portraits. Topics include Chapel Hill's social life and customs and the university's history in the twentieth century.
Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Joe Hakan's collection of anecdotes and personal essays about Chapel Hill in the 1950s and 1960s, the subtitle promising the town in those decades and other stories. It concerns Chapel Hill social life and customs, local history and anecdotes of the university. Published in Chapel Hill by Professional Press in 1996, 299 pages with illustrations.
Selected writings of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825 to 1908), the Chapel Hill writer who campaigned for the university's reopening after Reconstruction, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1953. The 753 pages touch on Chapel Hill life, education and the university in the nineteenth century.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1954).
David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.
Alphabetical guide to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by Nicholas Graham and Cecilia Moore, with short entries on campus landmarks, traditions, people and controversies. Entries run from the Old Well to COVID-19, and take in the Confederate monument and the retirement of coach Roy Williams. Revised and expanded edition published 2020 by UNC Press, 286 pages with illustrations, bibliography and index.
Robert E. Seymour's columns for the Chapel Hill News, gathered into a 192-page book by Chapel Hill Press in 2003. The short pieces offer anecdotes and reflections on Chapel Hill history, local manners and customs, and North Carolina life. Seymour (1925 to 2020) was the longtime pastor of Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church.
Published by the Chapel Hill Bicentennial Commission in 1994, this collection edited by Margaret Taylor marks two hundred years of the town. It covers Chapel Hill's history, social life and customs, with a biographical strand. 92 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Lucy Phillips Russell's autobiography, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1957 when the author was in her nineties. Born in 1862, Russell recalls life in Chapel Hill and Orange County from 1865 to 1945. 185 pages.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Apple Chill and Festifall, 1972–1994.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/apple-chill-festifall-storyline-1972/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
