Storyline · 1971–1992
Chapel Hill lifted its ban on bicycles on its main downtown streets in 1971 and marked bike routes, and Mayor Howard Lee led about 500 riders on a Bike Day parade. The town began ticketing cyclists, studied licensing and safety, and in 1974 began registering bicycles; Carrboro's aldermen took up the Carrboro Cyclists' safety plan that fall. By 1980 Chapel Hill had built its bond-financed bikeways, and from 1980 to 1982 Carrboro built its own with bonds and a federal grant, opening the Jones Ferry Road lanes in 1981 and a railroad-spur path to Chapel Hill in 1982. From 1985 Chapel Hill fined cyclists on downtown sidewalks, the state funded bike lanes on Airport Road and Carr Street in 1987, and in 1989 Carrboro adopted a safety campaign for cyclists and a townwide sidewalk and bikeway plan. In 1990 and 1991 town and University police began bicycle patrols and Carrboro planned a bike path behind Carr Mill Mall, and Chapel Hill, after sending back a helmet rule for all riders, required helmets for riders under 16.
Until April 26, 1971 it was unlawful in Chapel Hill to ride a bicycle along Franklin, Rosemary or Columbia streets; that day the aldermen dropped the ban, and over the following months the town marked bicycle routes on nine major roads. On May 8 about 500 riders led by Mayor Howard Lee and Alderman Alice Welsh paraded through town on Bike Day, held by ECOS and the new Chapel Hill Bicycle Club. In October the aldermen backed police plans to ticket cyclists riding without lights, running stop signs or riding against traffic. They tabled a $1 licensing ordinance in January 1972, but in November, given a petition with 500 signatures, they set up a committee to study bike routes, inspection, licensing, racks and lanes. In January 1973 the mayor's bicycling task force under Welsh decided that night riders without the required lights would be subject to arrest after February 1. In September 1974 Chapel Hill began registering bicycles for 50 cents under a new ordinance, police having counted 246 stolen in the first half of the year, and in November the Carrboro aldermen approved the first part of the Carrboro Cyclists' safety plan, raising storm drain grates and turning their grooves across a bicycle's path.
Carrboro Mayor Robert Drakeford declared April 2 to 8, 1979 Bike Safety Week, with balloon and safety-flag giveaways, group commutes to campus, free repairs at Town Hall and a 35-mile "Share the Road" ride to Durham. By January 15, 1980 Chapel Hill had built the bicycle paths paid for by a $340,000 bond voters approved in November 1976, along Franklin Street, N.C. 54 and Airport Road, with rush-hour bicycle lanes on Cameron Avenue and Country Club Road, and work had begun on a recreational bikeway along the U.S. 15-501 Bypass. On February 25 the Chapel Hill Town Council backed Carrboro's application for federal money to extend the Cameron Avenue route from South Graham Street to Merritt Mill Road and join it to Carrboro's paths, and by July 31 Carrboro had received a $107,360 federal grant, awarded through the N.C. Department of Transportation, toward a lighted, patrolled 14-foot asphalt path along the railroad tracks between Cameron Avenue and downtown Carrboro; its share was more than a quarter of $400,000 divided among eight southern states. Bike lanes were already being built on Greensboro Street. On September 9 the Carrboro aldermen adopted final plans for the Jones Ferry Road bikeway, and on September 26 the UNC trustees approved leasing Carrboro an 18-foot strip of University land near the railroad for the bikeway to campus, for 25 years if the federal government approved a construction grant, with the town carrying the upkeep and liability insurance and the land returning to the University if it stopped being used as a bikeway. By December 2, after a 33 percent rise in bicycle accidents and violations in the first nine months of 1980, Chapel Hill police said they would strictly enforce the town's bicycle ordinance and traffic laws, writing cyclists tickets in the same form as motorists' but without points.
In July 1981 Carrboro began building bicycle lanes along Jones Ferry Road to the center of town, widening the road eight feet on each side and rebuilding the Main Street intersections with Weaver Street and Jones Ferry Road, paid for by 1978 bikeway bonds and the federal grant. On October 21 a ribbon-cutting at Jones Ferry and Davie roads opened the Jones Ferry Road segment, the second finished after North Greensboro Street, reaching the apartment complexes near the N.C. 54 bypass; public works director Chris Peterson said the whole system, about $475,000, should be done by April 1, 1982. On October 27 the aldermen awarded $180,109 in contracts to Muirhead Construction Company for the last phases: realigning the Weaver and Main street intersection eastward to take in Roberson Street, with a new traffic signal, and building a bike path along the railroad spur from Roberson Street to Merritt Mill Road. On November 5 they voted to sell $1.5 million in recreation bonds, approved by voters in 1978, for later phases of the Carrboro Community Park and the bikeways, with the Farmers Home Administration pledged to buy them if they did not sell. By August 5, 1982 Carrboro had finished the railroad-spur bikepath linking the town with McCauley Street in Chapel Hill, at a cost of $92,356, to be dedicated in the first week of September, and it planned an $85,000 Weaver Street-Main Street bikepath for mid-September.
On August 26, 1985, after pedestrian complaints, Chapel Hill police began enforcing a town ordinance by fining people $1 for riding bicycles, mopeds or scooters on the sidewalks of the 100 blocks of Franklin and Rosemary streets. The state Transportation Improvement Program adopted on November 13, 1987 funded widening Airport Road between Homestead Road and Estes Drive for an on-road bike lane, about $100,000, and an on-road path on Carr Street in Carrboro linking the Jones Ferry Road bike lane to Carrboro's off-road path, both due in October 1988. On March 7, 1989, after Police Chief A.S. Herje reported that citations against cyclists were often thrown out of court, the Carrboro aldermen voted unanimously for a public relations program urging cyclists to obey traffic laws, and Alderman Frances Shetley proposed "Share the Road" signs to remind cyclists and motorists of the rules. On November 28 the aldermen adopted, 4 to 3, a townwide plan for sidewalks and bikeways linking neighborhoods with schools, Town Hall and downtown, with bicycle lanes to be considered on existing roads and required on new streets; on Shetley's motion it left out a costly Parker Street bike path meant to keep cyclists out of the Carr Mill Mall parking lot, and Tom Gurganus, Randy Marshall and Judith Wegner voted no.
On March 6, 1990 the Carrboro aldermen sent a proposal for a bike lane on Pathway Drive, linking the Cobblestone and Spring Valley subdivisions, to the Transportation Advisory Board and set a March 27 hearing so residents could speak; Mayor Eleanor Kinnaird stressed the growing number of bicycles and children in the area. On June 17 two officers from the Chapel Hill police walking unit began patrolling Franklin Street, the downtown business district, local playgrounds and the Cameron Avenue bike lanes on mountain bikes, a program the department said would cost $1,400 to run from April to October. On February 19, 1991 the Carrboro aldermen endorsed a $30,000 regional bicycle education and enforcement plan with Chapel Hill, Durham and the two counties but voted unanimously not to put about $3,700 into it, as the town's Transportation Advisory Board had advised; Kinnaird said Carrboro already led the state in bike paths. On February 26 the aldermen approved construction drawings and put out to bid a bike path of about 900 feet from North Greensboro Street, between the Harris Teeter lot and the railroad, to the back of Talbots, linking the North Greensboro Street bikeway with the Elizabeth Cotten Bike Path. The town had about $64,400 from a 1984 bond referendum against an estimated cost of $77,830, and Alderman Frances Shetley voted against the path because state transportation officials had questioned its route through a parking lot. On August 26 six University police officers who had volunteered began patrolling the campus on mountain bikes after four days of training, a program Chief Arnold Trujillo said cost about $2,000 and made officers more visible.
On September 10, 1991, after 30 people, more than half of them UNC students, spoke at a crowded public hearing, the Chapel Hill Town Council voted unanimously to send back to the town staff a proposed ordinance requiring every bicycle rider in town to wear a helmet, with a $15 fine; Orange-Chatham District Attorney Carl Fox, who had first said he would not prosecute violators, told the council the law could not be enforced. On October 14 the council voted 7 to 0 for an ordinance requiring cyclists under 16 on public rights of way, and any bicycle passenger, to wear a helmet with a chin strap, after amending it to leave out University students and other adults; violators were to be made to buy a helmet, with a $10 penalty for later offenses. By October 21 the town had set up a six-member Bicycle Advisory Committee, whose first task was a helmet education program, along with a Stormwater Management Committee. From April 20 to 26, 1992 the Chapel Hill Transportation Board held a Transportation Alternatives Week urging residents to walk, bicycle, ride buses or carpool, one of 20 suggestions in a report on cutting single-driver commuting that it prepared with the University's transportation board for the Town Council.
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Papers of Ellie Kinnaird, born 1931, a North Carolina state senator, spanning 1987 to 2016 and running to roughly 6,400 items across 20.5 linear feet in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5356. The papers focus on capital punishment in North Carolina and the campaigns against it, health insurance legislation, voting technology, and the work of women legislators in the General Assembly.
Eleanor Kinnaird beside an election campaign poster in an undated candid photograph. Kinnaird served as mayor of Carrboro and in the North Carolina Senate. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Howard N. Lee (born 1934) tells his own story, from a farm childhood in Lithonia, Georgia, through college, army service in Korea at Camp Casey and the move from Savannah that planted him in Chapel Hill, to his election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and his later run for Congress and years in the state legislature. Published by Cotton Patch Press of Chapel Hill in 2008, 199 pages with plates.
Edwin Caldwell, Jr. reviews a life in Chapel Hill politics in a three-hour Southern Oral History Program interview recorded March 2, 2001, by Oliver White. A skilled organizer, Caldwell worked in the campaign that made Howard Lee the town's first Black mayor in 1969, ran for office more than once without winning, and became a local political power. The conversation also covers race relations, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board and the Church of Reconciliation. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
Interview recorded June 21, 2000 with Rebecca Clark (1915-2009), a Black Chapel Hill resident, for the Southern Oral History Program at UNC. Clark, educated in Chapel Hill's segregated schools, describes working life under segregation and the economic discrimination she met in it. Topics also include Lincoln High School, school integration, and Howard Lee, elected mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969. Interview K-0536 in collection #4007.
Howard N. Lee's account of his own career, published in 2021 by the North Caroliniana Society with the society award given to him that year, together with tributes from Angela Lee, Valerie Foushee and others. Lee became mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969, the town's first Black mayor.
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.
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, Carrboro and the bicycle, 1971–1992.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/chapel-hill-bicycle-storyline-1971/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
