Place Information
|
Carrboro is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 16,782 at the 2000 census. History
Known originally as West End because of its location west of Chapel Hill, Carrboro was settled in 1882 around a spur of the Durham-Greensboro Southern Railway. The railroad stop was located about a mile west of the University of North Carolina (UNC) campus in order not to disturb the local population and to make it more difficult for students to leave campus by train. Settlement in West End increased after Thomas F. Lloyd of Chapel Hill built the Alberta Cotton Mill next to the railroad depot in 1890. Julian Shakespeare Carr bought this and other nearby buildings in 1909, adding them to the network of mills that became the Durham Hosiery Mills. West End was incorporated in 1911 and renamed Venable in honor of chemistry professor and UNC president Francis Preston Venable. Just two years later, the town was renamed Carrboro, after Carr began providing streets and electric power to the community and expanding the mill buildings. The original mill changed hands several times over the succeeding decades. The Carrboro Board of Aldermen intended to have it demolished in 1975 until a community petition and fundraising effort provided for its restoration as Carr Mill Mall. The railroad depot in Carrboro also served the local lumber industry, and Carrboro became a major hub in the hardwood cross-tie market. Carrboro's nickname, "The Paris of the Piedmont," comes from a humorous, sarcastic comment by John Martin, a reporter for the now-defunct Chapel Hill Weekly. In 1970, Nyle Frank, now a musician but then a graduate student in political science at the nearby University of North Carolina, organized an alternative "Invisible University," and announced plans to have himself crowned as the institution's new "King," in Carrboro. Martin commented, "I can see it now -- The Paris of the Piedmont."[1] Research Tips
|
