Orange County NC Website
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'ounty prepares to celebrate 250 ye...cultural diversity(6/16/2002,CHI) file:///ci/wmdowsnEMP/GW Viewer/town0l*IMI <br /> I W76c , VV-11 <br /> CIMpE HE <br /> News <br /> Home I Classifieds News Sports Opinion Our Town <br /> Arts Calendar I Real Estate Apartments.com Search Contact Us <br /> County prepares to celebrate 250 years of <br /> cultural diversity - <br /> On Sept. 9, 1752, anew county was born in the North Carolina back country-- <br /> a county that spanned the area from present-day Greensboro to present-day <br /> Durham, from the Virginia line to the Uwharrie mountains. <br /> On that day, Orange County became a reality as its first colonial court of <br /> common pleas and quarter sessions was held at Grayfields along the Eno River. <br /> Originally inhabited by the Occaneechi/Saponi nation and other Native <br /> American tribes,the new county encompassed a land area of 3,500 square miles <br /> (versus 400 today)that included all of present day Alamance, Caswell,Person, <br /> Durham and Chatham counties as well as parts of Wake,Lee, Randolph, <br /> Guilford and Rockingham counties. <br /> Mindful of our heritage,the mission of the Orange County 250 celebration is to <br /> bring together citizens to celebrate and educate themselves about the people <br /> past and present who have called Orange County home. <br /> As citizens in one of the oldest Piedmont counties, Orange County's 120,000 <br /> residents --up from 4,000 when the county was formed--have a lot to <br /> celebrate: <br /> Our commitment to education,from the founding of the University of North <br /> Carolina,the nation's first state university when it opened in 1795,through <br /> early advocacy for universal public education,the development of six <br /> freedmen's schools by 1868, a district tax enacted in the 1940s to boost local <br /> school funding in Chapel Hill and Carrboro,to today's changing UNC-Chapel <br /> Hill and local school systems rated among the best in the Southeastern United <br /> States. <br /> Our will to preserve cultural resources such as our tapestry of distinctive <br /> buildings and neighborhoods, as well as our farmland and natural treasures like <br /> Occoneechee Mountain and the Eno River corridor. <br /> of 1 nAnAnnm i.0 PM <br />