Orange County NC Website
Browse       Search
027 <br /> SECTION 8-STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE <br /> Summary Paragraph <br /> The Cedar Grove Rural Crossroads Historic District, located in northwest Orange County, is eligible for <br /> National Register listing under Criteria A and C. Significant in the area of Exploration and Settlement under <br /> Criteria A,the district exhibits the historic pattern of development in North Carolina's rural agricultural <br /> communities which manifested in the emergence of commercial and social centers along intersections of <br /> primary roads. The resources comprising the district embody the characteristics of a once prevalent rural <br /> agrarian landscape that evolved as a result of human activity and use. The landscape characteristics coalesce <br /> the natural,the cultivated and the built environment in a manner unique to the rural crossroads community as <br /> an outgrowth of its agrarian roots. Of the half-dozen or so rural crossroads communities that evolved during <br /> the nineteenth century in Orange County,Cedar Grove is among the most intact and least altered examples <br /> among this disappearing genre. Many rural community businesses have suffered economic demise as a <br /> result of the advance of the automobile and improved roads which have facilitated travel to larger retail <br /> businesses in urban areas. However,Cedar Grove survives as a community which retains a distinct identity <br /> reflected in its physicality as well as its historic culture. Significant under Criterion C in the area of <br /> Architecture, the community's enduring vitality is exhibited in a notable and varietal collection of late <br /> nineteenth and early-twentieth century residential and commercial buildings which provide the visual <br /> framework for a community that has remained virtually free of modern intrusions. A sense of continuity is <br /> tent in that many descendants of Cedar Grove's early founders reside in the community and maintain <br /> substantial family homeplaces. <br /> The community is eligible under Criterion A also in the area of Agriculture. The land has been continuously <br /> farmed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and existing field patterns deviate little from those <br /> evident during the early to mid-twentieth century. These continuing patterns of cultivation are testimony to <br /> the prevalence of farming over the course of the community's development. <br /> The community of Cedar Grove is additionally significant under Criterion A in the area of Social History. <br /> The physical development characteristics of the Cedar Grove community along with the inherent form of <br /> social interaction borne out those characteristics represents a disappearing genre in North Carolina given that <br /> the rural crossroads community became increasingly rare after the advent of the automobile and road <br />