Storyline
How Chapel Hill and Carrboro tried to agree on one thoroughfare plan in 1983 and 1984: the crowded hearings, the fights over roads across Mason Farm and McCauley Street, Carrboro’s West Franklin Street extension, the split over Estes Drive, the failed compromise and the state’s endorsement of Chapel Hill’s plan.
In briefIn 1983 Chapel Hill and Carrboro took a joint thoroughfare plan to crowded hearings, and Chapel Hill's boards dropped roads across the University's Mason Farm. The towns then split over extending Estes Drive toward Interstate 40, which Carrboro wanted. A compromise failed in April 1984, each town sent the state its own plan, and that August state transportation officials endorsed Chapel Hill's.
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In January 1983 Chapel Hill and Carrboro took up a draft thoroughfare plan meant to replace the plan of 1968. It proposed an outer loop, one-way pairs of Franklin and Rosemary and of Pittsboro and Columbia streets, and widening the U.S. 15-501 bypass. At a neighborhood meeting on January 11 residents near the bypass objected to six lanes east of South Columbia Street. More than 350 people came to the joint hearing of the Chapel Hill Town Council and the Carrboro aldermen on January 31, and most of the more than 50 speakers asked that the plan be adopted with changes. About two-fifths of the speakers opposed extending Parker Road to Barbee Chapel Road across the University's Mason Farm, and others opposed extending Pittsboro Street to Rosemary Street.
On February 15 the Transportation Board recommended moving the Parker Road extension south to the edge of Mason Farm, stopping the U.S. 15-501 widening at five lanes and dropping the McCauley Street extension. The Triangle Sierra Club and graduate students who used Mason Farm for research said the new route did not go far enough. A week later the Planning Board voted 6 to 3 to drop any road that would divide the Mason Farm research tract, and unanimously kept the Estes Drive extension to the bypass and the extensions of McCauley and Pittsboro streets. On March 14 residents of McCauley Street and Brookside Drive gave the council petitions with 204 signatures against extending their street, and on March 21 about 100 people crowded the council's hearing, many holding 'Save McCauley Street' signs and others opposing a Bayberry Drive extension proposed in place of the Parker Road route. In May the Planning Board accepted the plan with the Parker Road extension removed and sent it to the council.
On April 12, 1983 the Carrboro aldermen approved their town's part of the plan, an extension of West Franklin Street to the intersection of Main Street and Jones Ferry Road. The Chapel Hill Town Council unanimously adopted a revised plan on October 24, 1983 without an extension of Estes Drive, but the version Carrboro adopted in November carried Estes Drive east from the bypass toward the planned Interstate 40. On January 31, 1984 the Carrboro aldermen voted 4 to 3, with Mayor Jim Porto breaking a tie, to send the state Board of Transportation their own version. On March 12 the Chapel Hill council resolved that any road either town asked for could be considered for the joint plan, and on April 9, at the urging of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, it rescinded its earlier decisions, agreed to wait two weeks before sending a plan to the state and let Mayor Joe Nassif name three members to meet three Carrboro aldermen to work out a single plan. Nassif opposed the delay.
A compromise failed on April 24, 1984. The Chapel Hill council approved it unanimously on condition that Carrboro pass it too, but the Carrboro aldermen voted 4 to 2 against Porto's proposal to rescind their January plan and ask the state to study the whole plan, leaving out the Estes Drive extension for now. In August state Transportation Secretary William R. Roberson Jr. and highway administrator Billy Rose endorsed Chapel Hill's plan once Nassif agreed to keep open the possibility of an Estes Drive extension to I-40. That plan left out both the extension and the one-way pairing of Franklin and Rosemary streets, and it was expected to win the Board of Transportation's approval that fall. The Department of Transportation's 1990 table gives 1984 as the year the Chapel Hill-Carrboro thoroughfare plan was adopted.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 14 dated events in the chronology →
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Background reading on Roads, Rail & Transportation. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
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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