UNIVERSITY STATION

Map of Orange County as it was late 19th Century - University Station and the rail line are visible to the southeast of Hillsborough.

I've done an Orange County post or two before - given that most of Durham County was once Orange County, and the European settlement of Orange around the county seat of Hillsborough predated that of parts east, the early history of the two counties - and the cities of Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, and Durham are tightly interwoven, as much as we may act like rival siblings.

As most know, the establishment of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill predates significant agglomerations of people in now-Durham County, and the establishment of the city of Durham. The university was chartered in 1789 and began regular classes for undergraduates in 1795. It would be ~60 more years before the North Carolina Railroad would be constructed, leading to the establishment of the city of Durham.

Chapel Hill and UNC history is not my area, so the details of why Chapel Hill was chosen, aside from a central location in the state, are beyond my knowledge base.

It seems an interesting choice, though - one which would affect the transportation connectivity of the university much later (the main subject of this article.) The main roads of the state - from pre-European history to the 18th century, ran along relatively flat ridgelines. Those who have heard me speak have seen me start out talking about the NC railroad and Durham by pointing out the 'ridge' that separates the Cape Fear from the Neuse river basins - which became the Hillsborough - Raleigh Road in this area of the state. By separating the university from this existing 'highway' - atop a hill miles to the south, the founders made it rather more difficult to get to.

[Mark Chilton points out in the comments below that the site was on the road from Raleigh to Guilford Courthouse and the road from Pittsboro to Oxford - I believe this is the New Hope Road and only a mile off of the road from Fayetteville to Hillsborough.]

One major consequence of this arise when the North Carolina Railroad was established in 1848, the choice was made to run the route from Goldsboro to Greensboro, along the aforementioned ridgeline - which put the track, at its closest point, about 8.2 miles from the university.

With the establishment and growth of Durham, particularly after 1865, Durham quickly became a stopping off point for travelers (as Prattsburg had been previously) - from farmers bringing tobacco to auction, former rural residents looking for work, and students at the university, who found the depot at Durham Station the preferred point of transfer from road to railroad. Durham grew rapidly, and the proliferation of saloons was in no small part due to the demand of these constituencies. (College students, despite the romantic notions of college faculty and administration, have not changed much over the past 200+ years.)

The ingrained view of Durham as a dirty, uncouth place - in contrast with the slice of heaven atop a hill to the southwest, began to take shape during these mid-to-late-19th century years. There was some truth to this - Chapel HIll was bereft of the kind of industry and commerce that brought great wealth to Durham, but also all of the externalities of commerce and industry.

This tension would leave Chapel Hill and the university torn between the benefits of bringing a railroad to Chapel Hill and the concern over what that railroad might bring to Chapel Hill. Several failed attempts - including building a line to Durham - preceded the establishment of the Chapel Hill Iron Mountain Railroad company, which would not connect with Durham, but to a closer point to the NCRR mid-way between Hillsborough and Durham. It would also pass by Iron Mountain, with some promise of industrial utility for the line. The university stipulated that the railroad be located 2 miles away from the university - to again provide a buffer between the university and the feared influence of the train. The depot was established at the West End, later known as Venable, and still later, as Carrboro.

Map showing the relationship between Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and the rail line - now attributed to the Southern Railway

The connection with the NCRR was known as University Station, and later, just University. A station and a handful of houses and establishments grew around the depot. The name of the railroad company was soon changed to the State University Railroad Company, and the line was later operated by the Southern Railway.

The University Station Depot, circa 1910 (from the collection of Art Peterson, via the Piedmont and Western Railroad Club)

Although the sources I have give little attention to University Station, it doesn't seem that the depot grew at any significant rate. Houses and potentially lodging and food were available from a small number of venues. Several people with Durham connections established farms in the University Station area. The Fitzgerald family - Robert and Richard - established their first farm and brickmaking operation at University Station prior to moving to Durham's West End.

I've written previously about the various 'gentleman farmer' farmhouses/operations of Durham's wealthy industrialists, including Lochmoor, Bonnie Brae, Quail Roost Farm, and Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm. Jean Anderson notes two other farms of the Durham nobility that were located in the University Station area:

Benjamin Duke bought many small tracts and put together a farm of over two thousand acres, the Meadows, near University Station on the old road to Hillsborough. John T. Hogan, his farm manager, regularly sent him rather discouraging reports on the farming operations. In 1895, Duke added a large frame house (still standing) with wide porches facing the road to Hillsborough near University Station. In the next decade, James Southgate built on top of a nearby hill a two-story log house in which he entertained friends with his magnificent view of the countryside by day and the stars by night. The young members of the Fun-Lovers Club were entertained by Southgate once in their giddy youth and remembered it thirty years later as 'the grandest place with cozy corners galore. There were thirty of us at University Station... We sat around a big log fire and Mr. Southgate was grand to us. We all kissed him good-bye.'

(Ben Duke and James Southgate were neighbors back in Durham as well, both living on the southern corners of Willard and West Chapel Hill St.)

Carr, seemingly a man of boundless energy, provided funding for the initial University line, and later, as a state representative, sponsored a legislative bill to finally settle the unpaid monetary bill for the construction. Carr bought the established Alberta mill, built by Tom Lloyd in 1898, in 1909 and made it part of of his Durham Hosiery Mills empire as the Durham Hosiery Mill No. 4. He also purchased another Lloyd mill on the south side of Main St. and made it Durham Hosiery Mill No. 7 at the southern end of the line. The West End/Venable would come to be named for him in 1914 - Carrboro.

In the early 20th century, at the northern origin of the line, along US 70, north of the tracks, a sort of secondary nucleus grew of bungalows and a service station/store.

The Durham Hosiery Mills contracted severely in the 1930s - both 4 and 7 went out of business. The rise of automobile travel, which afforded a much more direct route to Chapel HIll, made the University line less and less viable. Per "Orange County, 1752-1952," the last passenger trains on the University line ran around 1940.

When the last train ran [in ~1940], Bruce Strowd issued an invitation to the children of Chapel Hill to make the trip over to the junction and back. Many of them found it an exciting adventure because they had never been on a railway train before.....Captain Fred Smith was conductor on the train from 1889 for about fifty years......

What happened to University and University Station over the subsequent decades isn't detailed anywhere that I've found, but photos from the Durham Morning Herald in 1972 show an underused looking place.

Looking south towards the junction, 03.10.72
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

University Station, 03.10.72
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

University Station, 03.10.72
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

University Station, 03.10.72
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

University Station, 03.10.72. This grocery was evidently burned by an arsonist in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

University Station, 03.10.72
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

University Station, 03.10.72
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

University Station, 03.10.72
(Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

I'm not sure where the station/platform actually were at University Station - there isn't clear evidence of them now. The station area still appears somewhat abandoned, although there is the house of a clear enthusiast behind the trees.

04.04.11

04.04.11

04.04.11

I believe the train still heads down this spur to supply coal to the UNC power plant, although I don't know that it serves anyone else. The Southern Railway station at Carrboro has been preserved (kudos to them for not being as deeply stupid as Durham in demolishing its own train station.) The former Durham Hosiery Mill No. 4 survives as the Carr Mill Mall - the 1977 year of its repurposing evident in its name.