Storyline · 1966–1978
James J. Freeland's Daniel Boone Village grew from an inn and restaurant at the South Churton Street exit of I-85 in 1966 into an amusement park with a railroad, rides, rinks, an amphitheater and a wax museum by the early 1970s. The rides were gone by the end of the decade and a shopping center replaced the park's north end, while Freeland moved old buildings to the village and the Big Barn hosted campus parties.
A 1966 plat of the Daniel Boone Inn and Restaurant Tract, eleven acres beside the Shell station at the South Churton Street interchange with I-85, shows a pond, a general store, a restaurant and a long two-story motel, the start of James J. Freeland's Daniel Boone Village. A family tribute display at Boone Square says that a late-1960s sale of the complex to a Baltimore buyer ended in court and that Freeland kept it; no court record has been found. By June 1971 Daniel Boone Park was advertising a railroad, rides, miniature golf, an amphitheater and a wax museum, and Black clubs from Durham held picnics there; by 1972 it also had roller and ice rinks, a ski lift, a toboggan slide, a fort and a campground. Hee Haw comedian Junior Samples headed a country bill at its amphitheater on June 13, 1971, and the roller rink at the Daniel Boone Inn reopened in July 1972, drawing mostly UNC students. By the end of the 1970s the rides were gone and the Boone Square shopping center had replaced the park's north end. Freeland moved the Gatewood House from Yanceyville to the village in 1978, and by October of that year the Big Barn Convention Center there was renting to UNC clubs, fraternities and sororities.
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.
Advertising postcard for the Daniel Boone Inn at the Hillsborough exit of I-85, published by Burnie Batchelor of Raleigh. The inn offered 30 motel units, a cafeteria and dining room, a tap room, an Olde Country Store and a display of 25 antique cars billed as including the world's oldest Cadillac. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Green were the managers. Undated.
Maxine Freeland's biography of James John Freeland (1918-1999), a Hillsborough man of the twentieth century, compiled in 1999.
Edward G. Danziger's memoir of love and cooking, published by J. F. Blair in 1967. Danziger (1893 to 1972) ran Danziger's Old World Restaurant in Chapel Hill, and the book tells his life as a restaurateur in the town.
William M. Rohe's history of Research Triangle Park and the region around it, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2011. Topics include regional planning and the economic and social conditions of the Research Triangle Park region, one corner of which is Chapel Hill and the university. 298 pages with illustrations and maps.
Herbert G. Gutman's 1976 history of African American families from 1750 to 1925, published by Pantheon Books in New York, 664 pages with 38 leaves of plates. Its Orange County connection is the Bennehan and Cameron family plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh: the book discusses the people enslaved by Richard Bennehan (1743-1825) and the Camerons, and follows family ties among them under slavery and after emancipation. Subjects include African American families and enslaved persons in Orange County.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1977), The William and Mary Quarterly (1977), The American Historical Review (1977), Journal of American History (1977), The History Teacher (1977), Political Science Quarterly (1977), Journal of Black Psychology (1978), Journal of Social History (1978), Civil War history (1978), Signs (1978).
Orvin Lee Shiflett's biography of William Terry Couch, 1901 to 1988, the editor who built up UNC Press at Chapel Hill over four decades in publishing, with a subtitle that calls his career a lightning rod for controversy. Chapters treat culture in the South, a case history in book publishing, objectivity and social science and 'The Sainted Book Burners'. It bears on scholarly publishing and university presses in the twentieth century. McFarland, 2015, 268 pages with illustrations.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
Annette Marie Council's book about her family and Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, the Chapel Hill restaurant, published by NP Press in 2005. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, the restaurant's history and family biography. Fourteen introductory pages and 223 pages of text with illustrations, part local history and part family account.
Albert N. Link's history of the Research Triangle Park, the research park founded to draw on the universities at Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh, published in 2002 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina in 278 pages with illustrations. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in North Carolina and the history of the park itself.
Charles X. Larrabee's history of the Research Triangle Institute over its first thirty one years, published in 1991. Topics include research institutes and research parks in North Carolina and the history of Research Triangle Park, the research district that lies between Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.
Alex Sayf Cummings's 2020 book on the knowledge economy of the Research Triangle, technology research and the history of Research Triangle Park. Chapel Hill and its university form one corner of the Triangle.
A tour guidebook prepared for the 2016 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference in Durham, leading visitors through buildings in Orange and Caswell counties. It takes in the architecture of the bright leaf tobacco economy and the work of Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Caswell County who worked in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Account of student protest in 1960s Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 with illustrations. It draws together the civil rights movement and segregation in the town, discrimination in restaurants, academic freedom and university autonomy, protest against the Vietnam War, Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Student Movement on campus.
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. “Daniel Boone Village, Hillsborough, 1966–1978.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/daniel-boone-village-storyline-1966/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
