Get to Know Orange County

Orange County is best known for being home to Chapel Hill, but the rest of the county is just as special and bursting with charm as its most famous town. Right next to Chapel Hill is Carrboro, a small bohemian community that is often considered part of Chapel Hill, as the two towns seamlessly flow into each other. But Carrboro has got its own funky groove and is home to two co-housing cooperatives, where residents participate in community gardening and shared meals; Cat’s Cradle, a music venue that has hosted Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Joan Baez; a much-loved farmer’s market; and a record store. The county seat, Hillsborough, is a small, rural, and historic town that’s blessed with rolling estates, a quaint downtown, and Riverwalk, an urban greenway that stretches along the Eno River. There’s a creative bent to Hillsborough, with plenty of artists and writers in residence.

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Living in the Research Triangle

The Research Triangle, or just the Triangle, is the three-sided region encompassed by the invisible lines that connect its three anchor cities: Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. This alliance came about in the late 1950s when academics at the three major research universities in each city — North Carolina State University in Raleigh, Duke in Durham, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — proposed the creation of a research park to allow the three schools to collaborate. The result, Research Triangle Park, which borders all three cities, quickly became an enormous success. As a result of RTP’s development, the Triangle has become an incredibly vibrant place to live, attracting newcomers with a combination of historic architecture, Southern charm, a delicious food scene, and an atmosphere of college town coolness married to high-tech employment opportunities and investment.