Storyline · 1936–1946
Chapel Hill's bus service went from a station on Rosemary Lane, through a contest between two lines, to a Colonial-style station on West Franklin Street held up by wartime shortages. In 1936 Carolina Coach Company moved the town's station to Rosemary Lane and Columbia Street, running ten round trips a day to Durham. In December 1942 Carolina Coach and the Virginia Stage Lines explained rival applications to run through Hillsboro and Yanceyville, and about fifty citizens petitioned for the Virginia line. By 1945 Carolina Coach had bought a lot at West Franklin and Kenan streets and promised a Colonial-style station, as the town planning commission wished, once wartime priorities for materials came through. It built the station in 1946.
Carolina Coach Company moved Chapel Hill's bus station from East Franklin Street to new quarters at the corner of Rosemary Lane and Columbia Street, opened the week of April 24, 1936. It ran ten round trips a day to Durham and four between Raleigh and Greensboro through Chapel Hill. In December 1942, at the Town Hall, J. G. Humphrey and William B. Umstead for Carolina Coach and Willis Smith for the Virginia Stage Lines explained their rival applications to the state Utilities Commission to the mayor, aldermen and other citizens. Carolina Coach sought to extend service from Chapel Hill through Hillsboro and Yanceyville to Reidsville; the Virginia Stage Lines sought to run from Raleigh through Chapel Hill, Hillsboro and Yanceyville toward Washington. Both promised several daily round trips to Hillsboro, and by January 7 about fifty citizens, Mayor Madry among them, had signed a petition for the Virginia Stage Lines. By February 1, 1945 Carolina Coach had bought a lot at West Franklin and Kenan streets for a long-wanted station. The company said it would build a Colonial-style station, as the town planning commission wished, once wartime priorities for materials came through. The station it built in 1946 at 311 West Franklin Street had a pedimented portico, a cupola with a weathervane and other Colonial details.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Blueprint by Atwood and Weeks, Inc. of Durham, August 1938, showing the basement and first floor plans of the Chapel Hill Municipal Building. The basement plan includes segregated restrooms. Drawing H-1.
Plan of the second floor of Chapel Hill's Municipal Building, sheet H-2 in the August 1938 set from Atwood and Weeks, Inc. of Durham. The back bears the name of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, the New Deal public works agency. The building is remembered as the Old Town Hall.
First sheet of the August 1938 blueprints for the Chapel Hill Municipal Building, a set commissioned by the Durham firm Atwood and Weeks, Inc. It lays out the foundation plan, wall footings and columns, with the building's lot on Rosemary Street. The job also carried Public Works Administration project number N.C. 1123F.
Blueprint dated August 1938 from Atwood and Weeks, Inc., the Durham firm, numbered drawing 2 in its set for the Chapel Hill Municipal Building. The sheet carries plans of the basement and first floor, with framing plans for the first and second floors.
Stewart E. Dunaway's compilation of Orange County road and bridge papers concerning county bridges between 1787 and 1865. It reproduces documents in facsimile, with maps and partial transcriptions, and provides names useful for genealogical research. First compiled in two volumes in 2008, then combined and updated, this 2013 edition has 253 pages, 28 cm.
Mark Chilton's short history of transportation planning in the North Carolina Piedmont, drawing lessons from earlier projects. Subjects include the Cape Fear Navigation Company and river navigation, and the railroads of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, including the State University Railroad Company whose spur brought trains to the two towns. Chilton was mayor of Carrboro when the book appeared. Published by Hand Made Books, Carrboro, 2012, 92 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Three volumes of historic Orange County road records compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway and self-published through Lulu.com in 2008, with maps. The documents, reproduced as facsimiles and sometimes transcribed, include petitions for new roads, requests for road upkeep, bridge records and papers explaining why roads were rerouted. Road petitions name the householders along a route. The third volume also gathers records connected with Cyrus Guy's lynching in Orange County in 1869.
Three volumes of Orange County road records assembled by Stewart E. Dunaway from the original petitions, orders and maps at the North Carolina State Archives, reproduced in facsimile with partial transcriptions. Volume 1 covers 1786 to 1820, volume 2 1820 to 1849 and volume 3 1850 to 1883. The papers document the laying out and upkeep of county roads and name the residents involved. June 2009 update, distributed through Lulu, 28 cm.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2013 compilation of Orange County deed records outside the regular deed books, covering 1752 to 1769 and 1793. The loose papers include road petitions and cartway orders, providing material for county history, genealogy and the history of roads.
Stewart E. Dunaway's first volume of Orange County road records, reproducing documents and maps from the North Carolina State Archives for the years 1786 to 1820, with partial transcriptions, an index and a list of overseers. Road papers name the landowners along each route. Self-published in 2010, 348 pages.
Raymond Arsenault's history of the 1961 Freedom Rides and the campaign against segregated interstate travel in the South. Published by Oxford University Press in 2006. Its North Carolina material reaches Chapel Hill, Durham, Greensboro and Charlotte, which is where the Orange County connection lies, and the wider subject is African American civil rights work, segregation in transportation and race relations through the twentieth century.
Community cookbook from Cross Roads Baptist Church in Hillsborough, printed by Morris Press Cookbooks in 2005 in a three-ring binder. Recipes are credited to their contributors. The book includes Southern cooking, church history and material on the Family House of Chapel Hill. 124 pages of recipes plus front and back matter, with color illustrations.
Joe Liles's interviews with longtime residents of Fish Dam Road, an old rural road in Durham County, recorded in 2004, with subjects tied to both Durham and Orange counties. The interviewees are Charles Scott Harkey, Mary Scarlett Jones, Boyce Link and John Scarlett, all born between 1912 and 1920, and the topics include country life, the road's history and the Duke Power Company.
Franklin Street through two centuries, gathered in a 24 page illustrated supplement the Chapel Hill News published on April 10, 1994 for the town's bicentennial. Topics include the street itself, town history and social life and customs. It belongs with the other bicentennial publications of 1993 and 1994 that treat the commercial center of Chapel Hill.
Bernard Lee Bryant's compilation of who occupied each structure on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill at five-year intervals from 1793 to 1998, issued by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1999 as a photocopy of his original computer printout on cotton paper. 191 leaves.
Glenn Holder's 1931 profile of Captain Fred Smith, who spent forty-two years as skipper of the train known as the 'Carrboro Limited' between Carrboro and Chapel Hill. Detached from the March 1931 issue of the university's Alumni Review, the piece recounts Chapel Hill railroad history. Smith lived from 1858 to 1939.
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. “Chapel Hill's bus service and bus stations, 1936–1946.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/bus-service-storyline-1936/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
