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ATTACHMENT 4 R ORMGE COUANTY 250 Celebrating 250 Years of Diversity, Freedom, Preservation and Education On September 9, 1752, a new county was born of the North Carolina back country — a county that spanned the area from present -day Greensboro to present -day Durham, from the Virginia line to the Uwharrie mountains. On that day, Orange County became a reality as the first colonial court was held at Grayfields along the Eno River. Originally inhabited by the Occaneechi /Saponi nation and other native American tribes, the new county encompassed a land area of 3,500 square miles, including all of present day Alamance, Caswell, Person, Durham and Chatham counties as well as parts of Wake, Lee, Randolph, Guildford and Rockingham counties. At its founding, Orange County had a population of 4,000. Two hundred and fifty years later, as citizens in one of the oldest Piedmont counties, Orange County's 120,000 residents — residing in an area just under 400 square miles — have a lot to celebrate: ➢ A legacy of education that dates back to the opening of the first state university in the nation with the University of North Carolina, chartered in 1789 and opened in 1795, through the development of six freedmen's schools formed in Orange County by 1868, and continuing today with a burgeoning UNC- Chapel Hill and local school systems rated among the best in the southeastern U.S. ➢ A legacy of preservation, of cultural resources like colonial era buildings, of agricultural resources and farmland, and of natural resources like Occoneechee Mountain, Seven Mile Creek, and the Eno River corridor. ➢ A legacy of diversity — beginning first with Indian nations, reshaped by the arrival of people from Europe and Africa, and in recent years with the addition of many persons from Asia, Latin America and other places around the globe. ➢ A legacy of freedom, whether the ideals of freedom expressed by the Regulators and the patriots of the American Revolution, by women struggling for equality, by African - Americans fighting to own property and achieve civil rights, by sharecroppers and mill workers striving for dignity, by free - speech advocates in the mid -20th century. In all of these struggles, important battles were fought in Orange County. For all of these reasons, there is a need to celebrate 250 years of our County. Although social and political issues sometimes divide us, there is much that