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How Chapel Hill got a public bus system between 1968 and 1974: the student-run campus buses, the town buses that ran for five weeks in 1971, the referendums Chapel Hill passed and Carrboro turned down, the federal grant and the University’s bus-pass contract, and the start of Chapel Hill Transit in August 1974.
In briefStudent-run buses began crossing the UNC campus in 1968, and a bus system for the University and the two towns was planned from 1970. Town buses ran for five weeks in 1971 before their money ran out, and voters then turned down a bus tax. Carrboro refused to join a later plan, but in February 1973 Chapel Hill voters approved bonds and a tax. With a federal grant, a University contract for bus passes and used buses from Atlanta, Chapel Hill Transit began running on August 1, 1974 and carried about 259,000 riders in its first eight weeks. The drivers formed a union in 1975, the town leased University airport land for a bus garage, and the buses carried more than two million riders in their first year. Service was cut in 1976 and night buses gave way to shared-ride taxis in 1977, and in 1979 federal aid lowered the bus tax and paid for 17 new buses. From 1980 the town replaced its aging buses with new General Motors buses that knelt at the curb and carried wheelchair lifts, finished a maintenance and operations facility and reshaped its routes, running nine from the fall of 1982. Ridership slipped in 1981, fares rose, and the drivers petitioned against the town's purchase of uniforms until they began wearing them in 1983. Ridership, down to 1.81 million in 1984-85, rose again from 1985 to more than 10,000 riders a day as the system added routes and buses. In 1988 a Blue Line began running to Duke, and in 1989 the council approved a park-and-ride lot on N.C. 54, the University opened one on Estes Drive, and the state funded 14 more buses and more park-and-ride lots. In 1990, after carrying more than 2.1 million riders the year before, the buses began running from a new park-and-ride lot on N.C. 54 East, 14 new buses arrived, and drivers complained that tight schedules forced them to speed.
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On May 6, 1968 two air-conditioned City Coach Lines buses, chartered for two weeks by the Student Transportation Commission, began running between Chase Cafeteria and Wilson Library for a ten-cent fare and carried 1,229 riders the first day. The student-run line came back as a regular campus service on September 23, carrying 1,947 riders its first day, and the University's Traffic and Safety Commission pledged up to $1,250 a month from vehicle registration fees to cover any shortfall. By December the buses also looped through Odum and Victory villages, and in March 1969 service ran to 9 p.m. In February 1970 a Public Transportation Commission named by Mayor Howard Lee, Carrboro Mayor Hughes Lloyd and Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson met for the first time to plan a bus system linking the University and the two towns, and that October the Chapel Hill aldermen granted Raleigh City Coach Lines a bus franchise and backed a mass transit study by Kimley-Horn. A strike by the Raleigh company's drivers stopped the campus buses, which carried 2,700 to 3,000 riders a day, from December 4, 1970 until the students began free evening service with chartered Durham buses on December 15.
Early in 1971 the two towns agreed to subsidize a town bus service run by Raleigh City Coach Lines, Chapel Hill covering 85 percent of any loss and Carrboro 15 percent. Five buses began running seven routes in late March, but riders averaged 386 a day, a fare cut from 25 to 15 cents raised the daily high only to 522, and the buses stopped on April 30 when the $12,000 subsidy ran out. On May 4 voters turned down a bus tax of up to eight cents per $100, Chapel Hill by five votes, 2,282 to 2,277, and Carrboro by 530 to 196. The student buses kept running, adding lunch-hour runs to the fraternities on the Finley Golf Course road that fall, a loop to the Municipal Building for students registering to vote in March 1972, and a $6 semester pass and weekend runs to Eastgate in October 1972.
In 1972 the Transportation Commission proposed a $440,000 system of 18 or 19 buses on figure-eight routes through campus, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, drawn up by Kimley-Horn and paid for by a town tax, federal funds and a student fee. The Chapel Hill aldermen put off a November vote in August, then in September and October called a January referendum on bonds and a tax subsidy. Carrboro's aldermen agreed to the same date, reversed themselves in October, and in November refused again despite a petition with 361 signatures, Mayor R. J. Wells calling the date too early. Chapel Hill went ahead alone: in December it put a special tax of up to 10 cents per $100 and $350,000 in bonds before its voters, and the commission dropped Carrboro from the routes. A record 13,958 voters registered, a gain of 78.3 percent over May 1971 that the elections board credited to the 18-year-old vote and its policy of registering students, and on February 20, 1973 Chapel Hill approved the bonds, 3,366 to 1,739, and the tax, 3,242 to 1,856, with the widest margins in the student precincts. In Carrboro a hearing on January 16, called after three petitions with 1,042 signatures, drew more than 100 people; on February 13 Wells broke a tie to call a referendum, the board set it for May 5, and that day Carrboro voters turned down joining the system. The 1973-74 Chapel Hill budget set aside 3.5 cents of the tax rate for the bus bonds.
In September 1973 Chapel Hill applied to the Urban Mass Transportation Administration for a capital grant of 80 percent of the cost of buses, fare boxes, a garage and radios, held the required hearing in October, and in November approved an arrangement with the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Labor Department that cleared the way. The grant, $860,480, was approved on January 9, 1974, and that month Carrboro created a public transportation commission to weigh a third referendum. In March the aldermen approved a contract under which the University would pay $300,000 the first year, sold to students and employees as bus passes, for campus routes and shuttles to commuter lots at Horace Williams Airport and University Mall; the trustees approved it on April 12 with a parking plan that roughly halved the permits sold. In April the town won 22 used 1958 and 1959 diesel buses from Atlanta's transit authority, budgeted $117,600 for them and asked Orange County to help pay for the system, and the aldermen received a downtown parking study meant to keep students' cars from flooding downtown. On July 1 the University began zone parking and put about 300 meters on campus streets and lots.
Chapel Hill Transit began service on August 1, 1974, after Mayor Lee and Chancellor Ferebee Taylor cut the ribbon, with eight town, campus and park-and-ride routes; Carrboro was not yet served. With buses passing up waiting riders at rush hour, the aldermen voted in September to lease six more used buses from Atlanta, but the Atlanta authority refused, and the buses carried about 259,000 riders in their first eight weeks. That month the town gave Village Apartments a one-year franchise to run English double-decker buses from its Carrboro complex, and in October it created a nine-member Transportation Advisory Committee, doubled its parking meter rate to 20 cents an hour and readied tokens good in meters, parking lots and fare boxes. The first of its new buses, a 42-seat General Motors coach, arrived on October 25, 1974. In Carrboro the transportation commission, split three to three on calling another referendum, got its seventh member that month.
In December 1974 the aldermen asked for federal money for seven more buses and a maintenance garage, including $300,000 to prepare a site on Plant Road, and Mayor Lee named a committee to meet with the transit workers' union. On January 12, 1975 the drivers, then 40 full-time and eight part-time, voted 21 to 4 to form a local of the Amalgamated Transit Union, and the next day the aldermen recognized their right to join it, allowing a union representative at complaint meetings and payroll deduction of dues, though state law barred the town from bargaining with the union. The system counted its millionth passenger on January 15, a University faculty member boarding a G-route bus on Franklin Street, and on January 30 Lee cut the ribbon at University Mall on new 25-passenger midi-buses, one of them with a wheelchair lift for elderly riders. In February the aldermen added temporary maintenance space at the Plant Road garage, and in August the town agreed to lease 34 acres in the northeast corner of the University's Horace Williams Airport property, by Glen Heights and N.C. 86, for $1 a year for 30 years as the site of a bus garage and public works building. The fall schedules added a rush-hour Route D to the Blue Cross building and the Pinegate and Foxcroft apartments on the Durham Boulevard, extended Route B to the hospital's new Bed Tower and ran the N bus to University Mall. The buses carried more than two million riders in their first year, but the year's deficit ran about $400,000, double the budget estimate, mostly from maintenance and insurance on the 16-year-old buses bought from Atlanta.
In March 1976 the aldermen approved a 1976-77 agreement under which the University would buy fewer passes than the town had asked and stop giving a bus pass with each parking permit, and to cover an 11 percent rise in operating costs the town ended night service after 7 p.m. on all town routes but the U campus route and dropped Sunday service except on the F and U routes; after student protests the University paid to keep the late-night U route running to 1:30 a.m. In May, with summer ridership down about 65 percent, the buses dropped the S and A routes, and 21 drivers were laid off. In June the aldermen raised the bus tax from 7.5 cents to the full 10 cents the referendum allowed, restoring rush-hour service on the D and N routes, night service to 9:30 p.m. on most routes and more Sunday service. In October Town Manager Kurt Jenne named three town officials to look into complaints in the Transportation Department after its director, John Pappas, reported problems he could not resolve; drivers told the Daily Tar Heel that morale was low. In November Pappas, who had run the system since it began, resigned over a disagreement with Jenne on handling personnel problems, and John Bartosiewicz became acting director. That month student leaders petitioned for full bus service even at higher parking fees, while the Faculty Council tabled one resolution backing the system and in February 1977 voted down another. In April 1977, 41 department employees signed an open letter objecting that drivers with more seniority were being laid off for the summer while newer ones were kept, and Otis Stroud, the drivers' representative to the union, called for a full return to seniority. The aldermen budgeted $946,125 for the buses in 1977-78, less than the transportation board and Jenne had asked. On August 22, 1977 the town replaced its fixed-route night buses with a shared-ride taxi service for bus-pass holders, weeknights from 7 p.m. to midnight, using cabs hired from Carolina Cab Co.; the taxis carried about 40 riders a night, against about 190 on the night buses the fall before. The University, which in July had accepted a compromise offered by Mayor James C. Wallace on its share of the bus budget, held back its signature over the loss of the night buses until September 30, when it agreed to a trial of the taxis. With the taxis carrying 50 to 75 riders a night, short of the 100 set in that contract, pass holders rode them free from November 16, the town paying the cab company the 25-cent surcharge.
In the summer of 1979 the system received $427,000 in federal operating assistance, half its net operating cost, which let the town lower its bus tax from 10 cents to 7 cents per $100 of property value, and nearly $2 million in federal capital assistance to buy 17 new buses. That August Chapel Hill Transit took over the evening and Sunday shared-ride taxis from the Carolina Cab Company, which had run them under contract for two years, to cut costs and link the cabs and buses by radio. It also added a bus each to the D and F routes and made the N route an all-day service with a shared-ride feeder for Morgan Creek and Highland Woods. The buses carried 124,595 riders in August 1979, 22 percent more than a year before, and ridership on the C route through Carrboro's apartment complexes nearly doubled in the first week of classes; officials credited higher gas prices, a parking shortage and added service, and said the system was nearing the most it could carry.
In November 1979 a University-arranged commuter bus to Durham was dropped for lack of riders. Chapel Hill's own buses carried 127,624 riders in December 1979, against 122,860 a year before, and transit officials said the system was close to capacity; that month the Transportation Department ordered 16 new General Motors buses, about $2.2 million with 80 percent federal money, and Transportation Director Bob Godding said some buses then in use were 25 years old. On January 2, 1980 a new A route began on Airport Road from Manning Drive north to Carol Woods, with midday shared-ride feeders to North Forest Hills and Glen Heights. On January 14 the Town Council asked the state for $1,592,363 for transit projects, among them eight new buses a year ahead of schedule, and a federal grant in March for five more brought the number funded to 21, when 22 of the buses in service had been built before 1960; transit officials said the new buses would let the town split the overcrowded C route to Carrboro. In April the Planning Board recommended a 20-year plan calling for 69 more buses and a park-ride lot on N.C. 54 East, and in September a state committee approved a grant request for four more buses. By then the Tarheel Express, in its fifth year, carried football fans from free lots at Kroger Plaza and on Estes Drive to Kenan Stadium. The first two of the 16 new buses arrived by October 21, with steps that knelt toward the curb and wheelchair lifts at the rear doors, and they cut the fleet's average age from 17 years to four. That November the town finished its Municipal Maintenance and Operations Facility on Municipal Drive, off Airport Road.
In February 1981 the council applied for $900,000 for seven buses, radio equipment and shared-ride sedans, Godding saying the town still ran 16 buses more than 20 years old, and in October it recommended General Motors for 12 advanced design buses over a lower bid from Neoplan USA, a West German-based maker that had never built the model. The Transportation Board's 1981-82 plan, approved in March, added a bus to the crowded D route and sent it past the new Hotel Europa, and route changes approved in June for August rerouted the A route, dropped the K express to Kroger Plaza and added D, G and evening FL service; by November 17 the D bus ran up a new service road to Europa Drive for the hotel's 160 employees. By October 23 a teletype line let deaf and hearing-impaired riders reserve Shared Ride and E-Z Rider trips. Ridership slipped, half a percent below the year before in September 1981 and about 5 percent in December, which Godding laid partly to steadier gas prices. Because the 1980 census placed Chapel Hill and Carrboro in the Durham urbanized area, the towns were to move on April 1, 1982 from federal transit aid for non-urban areas to urban aid, which Durham would receive and share with them. After a major revamping, the system began the 1982-83 school year on nine routes, the S and U campus routes and seven serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro, with shared-ride feeders to Morgan Creek, South Lakeshore and Cedar Hills, and on October 11, 1982 the council took a $119,280 federal grant to build 23 bus shelters in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and on the campus and make 11 stops accessible to handicapped riders.
The drivers pressed concerns of their own. In February 1981 contract drivers, who worked fewer than 1,000 hours a year, asked the council for the health insurance and sick leave that regular part-time drivers had; the council took no action. That fall the Transportation Board, after a drivers' petition against uniforms signed by nearly 60 percent of drivers and 95 percent of the riders asked, voted 6 to 1 against spending the $11,000 set aside for them, but on November 4 the council voted 6 to 3 to buy the uniforms, with Joe Straley, Bill Thorpe and Joe Herzenberg voting no. A third petition, with 5,495 signatures, reached the council on February 8, 1982. After the council cut the allocation that summer, the uniforms cost $7,000, and on February 28, 1983 drivers whose uniforms fit began wearing the plain light blue shirts and dark blue pants on the town's order. Fares rose meanwhile: the council raised fares and passes 62.5 percent in 1980, set the cash fare at 40 cents in 1981, added a 50-cent peak fare in July 1982 and raised the off-peak fare to 50 cents in May 1984. Students bought 47 percent fewer academic-year passes after the 1980 increase, though ridership rose 4 percent in the second half of that year.
Ridership had fallen from about 2.38 million in 1976 to 1.81 million in 1984-85. On August 19, 1985 Chapel Hill Transit began peak-hour service to The Villages apartments on Smith Level Road in Carrboro and a new T route from Kensington Trace, Timberlyne and Weatherstone along Weaver Dairy Road, and that fall transit director Alan Tobias reported the system's first rise in ridership in three years, to more than 10,000 riders a day, three-quarters of them UNC students; he credited higher gasoline prices. The system had also dropped service to Morgan Lake and South Lake and used Dixon Cab Company taxis at bus fare to bring riders from low-demand areas to bus stops.
By September 1986 it had added an S route linking the lot near the Smith Center, N.C. Memorial Hospital and the Carolina Inn, an L route past the law school and a P route from Horace Williams Airport, and July riders were up 17 percent from a year before. An October survey found about 10,000 people riding each day on nine routes, the U campus route and the J route along the U.S. 15-501 Bypass to Carrboro apartments the busiest. State figures showed more than 615,000 passengers in the first three months of 1987, up 9.8 percent from a year before, the largest rise in the state. Twelve new buses went into service that summer, the A, C, D and J routes were extended, and the system added 5:45 a.m. stops at the F and FR lots on the S route and an evening shuttle every 12 minutes from N.C. Memorial Hospital.
In the first week of January 1988 a free shuttle run by Duke, with UNC paying half the cost, began carrying students who took courses on both campuses, and Chapel Hill Transit's own Blue Line between UNC and Duke University began limited service that spring. On March 17 shuttles for the NCAA East Regional games at the Smith Center carried more than 21,000 round trips, a single-day record for Chapel Hill Transit, which ran all 45 of its buses plus 10 borrowed from Duke Power. In August a $77,115 federal grant won approval to plan a bus system linking Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, the airport and Research Triangle Park; the state's public transportation director said none of the three existing bus systems connected with each other. At a ceremony in Durham on September 20, Mayor Wib Gulley gave Chapel Hill Mayor Jonathan Howes a permit letting Chapel Hill Transit buses operate in Durham, completing the Blue Line's expansion, and its riders grew from 37 to 150 a day in three weeks. That month, at student government's request and for safety, UNC extended the L route shuttle to run from 7 p.m. to midnight between the F lot and Boundary Street, and after students objected to its 25-cent fare it ran fare-free for the rest of the semester.
In 1989 the town and the University turned to park-and-ride lots. By February 10 the N.C. Council of State had approved a 512-space lot on University land along N.C. 54 near the Durham-Orange county line, which UNC leased to the town so the town could get federal transit money, and on April 24 the Town Council voted 6 to 2 for its special use permit over objections from neighbors in the Finley Forest condominiums; Roosevelt Wilkerson and Jim Wallace voted no, Wilkerson saying the town was held captive by the University's power. Over the summer the University built a 500-space lot on Estes Drive near Horace Williams Airport to replace the spaces to be lost while the Craige parking deck was built. That fall UNC and Chapel Hill Transit rerouted the P bus past most residence halls and dropped the L route, and University bus ridership rose 9 percent in under two months. On October 13 the N.C. Board of Transportation allotted state money for 14 new Chapel Hill Transit buses, five to replace worn-out buses and nine to meet growing ridership, and for park-and-ride lots on N.C. 54 East by the UNC Continuing Education Center and off U.S. 15-501 South near Dogwood Acres; the added buses would push the Airport Road maintenance garage past its 50-bus limit, so the town planned to enlarge it.
In February 1990 transportation director John Gardner said the buses had carried 2,112,311 riders the year before and that ridership was up 10 percent in 1989-90; a study two years earlier had found that students made 85 percent of bus trips to campus. On August 27, 1990 buses began running from the town's new 8-acre, $738,000 park-and-ride lot on N.C. 54 East beside UNC's new Continuing Education Center, built on land the University provided. Its 512 spaces served commuters from Raleigh and Durham, buses left for downtown and the campus every 10 minutes in the morning peak, and the lot replaced the General Administration building as the stop for the Tar Heel Express to athletic events. In September 14 new air-conditioned buses built in New Mexico, with wheelchair access and electronic destination signs, arrived at a cost of $2,345,322; five were to replace old buses, some of them 22 years old, and nine to expand service. At the end of the month drivers told the Daily Tar Heel that tight schedules forced them to speed and hurt their merit ratings, and that management played favorites and paid them poorly, complaints one of them had made in a letter to the Chapel Hill Herald. Administrative assistant Scott McClellan answered the next day that drivers could use the grievance process without fear.
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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.
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.
Update to the Town of Chapel Hill's transit development program, covering 1981 through 1986 and published by the town in 1981. It sets out local transit and transportation planning for those years.
The Town of Chapel Hill's transit development plan for 1979 through 1984, dated July 1979 on the cover and published by the town. It covers buses, Chapel Hill Transit and local transit planning.
Survey report on how riders and residents viewed the Chapel Hill bus system, prepared by Gorman Gilbert and James F. Foerster for the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina in 1975. The final report of a transit evaluation project, and it deals with public opinion on bus lines in Chapel Hill.
Feasibility study for public mass transportation in the Chapel Hill, Carrboro and University of North Carolina area, prepared in September 1972 by Kimley-Horn and Associates of Raleigh for the two towns, the joint transportation commission and the university student government. Seventy eight pages with illustrations. It records how bus service for the towns and the campus was first costed and planned.
Victory Village, the postwar student housing at UNC, in five photographs from 1948 to 1950. They show houses among trees, the backs of the houses in winter and a house with a car parked outside. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Victory Village, the University of North Carolina's housing for student veterans and their families after the Second World War, in newspaper clippings and photocopied articles. Undated folder, Chapel Hill Historical Society vertical files.
Daniel Schwartz's Clipped Wings: The Story of Horace Williams Airport, on the university airfield in Chapel Hill. Listed with a 2026 date.
Aerial view of Horace Williams Airport in Chapel Hill, taken in 1989. One print from the Infrastructure series of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Operating policies and procedures for Horace Williams Airport in Chapel Hill, owned and run by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This revision, dated October 1, 1975, sets out rules for use of the airport.
A 1942 typescript summary of the flight training the University of North Carolina offered at Horace Williams Airport in Chapel Hill, written for readers interested in the university's aviation facilities. Subjects include the training of military air pilots at Chapel Hill. In UNC's North Carolina Collection.
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.
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.
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