Storyline
The park of 1959 and the commuting, housing, and growth pressure that remade rural Orange County into a university region.
In briefThe Research Triangle Foundation, formed in 1959, ran the research park planned between Durham and Raleigh around UNC, N.C. State and Duke. That November Orange County commissioners said the park would bring the county mainly new residents and school costs rather than taxable industry, and began discussing county-wide zoning.
Read the 27 eventsAll storylines
315 works about Research Triangle Park and the county’s transformation are indexed here. 10 held at OCPL →
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 27 dated events in the chronology →
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Filter these works by material, period, or place. Counts refer to works, not individual copies. A work may appear under more than one period or place.
Ejectment suits were the legal route for disputing who held title to a tract of land, and the case files often include plats and drawings of the property. Stewart E. Dunaway gathered Orange County's ejectment cases from the state archives and reproduced them in facsimile, with maps, in a self-published volume issued through Lulu in 2015 (issue 2).
Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Land use -- North Carolina -- Orange County -- History.
Comprehensive transportation plan for Orange County prepared by Sarah Lee for the Transportation Planning Branch of the N.C. Department of Transportation, October 2013. It covers highway planning, roads and their environmental effects, and traffic engineering, with color maps, some folded.
Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: City planning -- North Carolina -- Orange County.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
A group of materials combining a county planning document with a highway map of Orange County, dated 2012. The planning piece, issued in Raleigh by a state commission, lays out a planning and management process for the county with recommendations on land development. The map, based on the statewide highway planning survey, shows roads, bridges, utilities, public property, businesses and industries across Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough; one copy carries red-pencil notes naming the county's voting precincts.
Included because: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Regional planning -- North Carolina -- Orange County.
Stewart E. Dunaway's abstracts of civil suits over land heard in the Hillsborough District Superior Court between 1778 and 1806. The district covered Orange, Wake, Granville, Caswell, Person, Chatham and Randolph counties, and the papers concern boundaries, ownership and disputed tracts. Published through Lulu in 2011, 337 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles.
Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Land use -- North Carolina -- Orange County -- History.
Stewart E. Dunaway's four-volume set of ejectment cases from Orange County, reproducing the original documents and maps from the North Carolina State Archives with partial transcriptions. The volumes cover 1778 to 1814, 1817 to 1832, 1833 to 1849 and 1850 to 1902. Ejectment suits contested title and possession of land, and the cases include surveys and plats. Self-published in 2010.
Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Land use -- North Carolina -- Orange County -- History.
Stewart E. Dunaway's two-volume edition of the Orange County land entry book, the register in which settlers first claimed vacant land from the state before a grant was surveyed and issued. Volume one covers the first thousand entries, all made in 1778; volume two runs from 1779 to 1795. Each entry is reproduced from the original in the State Archives with an abstract of its contents. Self-published through Lulu in a second version dated 2010, two volumes at 28 cm with facsimiles and maps.
Included because: Catalog heading in the Durham record: Land Use -- North Carolina -- Orange County.
Traffic study for Carolina North, the University of North Carolina's planned development in Chapel Hill, prepared by the consulting firm Vanasse Hangen Brustlin of Watertown, Massachusetts, and dated June 3, 2009. One spiral-bound volume in various pagings with illustrations and folded maps, plus a 12-page addendum on parking and mode share. The study includes traffic estimates and the environmental effects of transportation.
Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: City planning -- North Carolina -- Chapel Hill.
A long range transportation plan adopted in 2005 with a planning horizon of 2030. It concerns highway and transportation planning in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough and Orange County, together with Durham and Chatham counties, and includes population, employment and economic statistics for the three counties.
Included because: Catalog heading in the Durham record: Orange County (N.C.) -- Population -- Statistics.
Advertising supplement to the Durham Herald-Sun, issued as a periodical from 2005 and covering Durham, Orange, Person, Chatham, Granville and Vance counties, according to the 2008/2009 cover. It provides visitor information for the counties and the Research Triangle. Illustrated, partly in color, in a large format of 28 to 31 cm.
Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Research Triangle (N.C.) -- Description and travel -- Periodicals.
The draft of the 2030 Long Range Transportation Plan for the Durham and Orange County area, dated 2004, covering highway and transportation planning in Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Durham and Orange County and population, employment and economic statistics in Orange, Durham and Chatham counties. A planning document for those tracing how the county's roads were projected to grow.
Included because: Catalog heading in the Durham record: Orange County (N.C.) -- Population -- Statistics.
A companion volume of socioeconomic data prepared in 2003 for the draft 2030 Long Range Transportation Plan, giving the population, employment and economic figures for Orange, Durham and Chatham counties on which the highway and transportation planning for Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough and Durham rested. Its genre is statistics. Like the plan itself.
Included because: Catalog heading in the Durham record: Orange County (N.C.) -- Population -- Statistics.
Telephone directory issued in 2002 by the Talking Phone Book, covering Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough alongside Durham, Butner, Creedmoor, Mebane, Pittsboro, Saxapahaw, Research Triangle Park and the Raleigh-Durham airport. 472 pages with illustrations.
Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Research Triangle Park (N.C.) -- Telephone directories.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this storyline. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this storyline 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.
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.
Ann Prospero profiles Research Triangle cooks and restaurants, including recipes from each kitchen. Combining biography and cookbook, it covers a region that includes Chapel Hill. Published by John F. Blair in 2009, 224 pages with illustrations.
Dean W. Colvard, Douglas M. Orr Jr. and Mary Dawn Bailey recount the first two decades of University Research Park, the research and corporate park in Charlotte's University City, which is also home to UNC Charlotte. Published by the university's Urban Institute in 1988; 118 pages with color illustrations and maps, references and an index.
Stewart E. Dunaway's abstracts of civil suits over land heard in the Hillsborough District Superior Court between 1778 and 1806. The district covered Orange, Wake, Granville, Caswell, Person, Chatham and Randolph counties, and the papers concern boundaries, ownership and disputed tracts. Published through Lulu in 2011, 337 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles.
Illustrated keys for identifying the native plants of the Triangle region around Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, compiled by Roy C. Lindholm and published by him in Chapel Hill in 2002, with a short bibliography and indexes.
Ejectment suits were the legal route for disputing who held title to a tract of land, and the case files often include plats and drawings of the property. Stewart E. Dunaway gathered Orange County's ejectment cases from the state archives and reproduced them in facsimile, with maps, in a self-published volume issued through Lulu in 2015 (issue 2).
Sources and research tools for this storyline. Research guide: Follow an event across several accounts.
Picture: Lake Betz, Research Triangle Park. CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph by Abhiram Juvvadi; via Wikimedia Commons
More to discover
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