Get to Know Wake County

The county seat of Wake County is Raleigh, which is also the state capital. The rest of the county — a mix of small towns, suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas — essentially serve as satellites of Raleigh. Three of the more well-known communities in Wake County include Cary and Apex, two affluent suburbs, and Wake Forest, a small town that lent its name to the eponymous university before it moved to Winston-Salem. Cary and Apex have both seen tremendous growth in recent decades, as people began to look just outside Raleigh for newer homes and larger lots. The two suburbs have plenty of amenities, including miles of greenway paths and lots of shopping and dining options. Wake Forest, perhaps due to the significant traffic that separates it from downtown Raleigh, is more self-contained than other cities, offering a lager variety of independent stores and restaurants and a more diverse mix of housing stock.

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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.