About Open Orange | Open Orange

Open Orange is based on the Contributing Structure platform, a Drupal-based website created by Gary Kueber and several Drupal developers. Its first iteration was Open Durham, a crowdsourced (think Wikipedia) inventory of buildings, people, and places in Durham, NC, which Gary donated to Preservation Durham in May 2016.

Open Orange aims to be a county-wide inventory for Orange County, North Carolina. It's easy to create a login and begin adding information and stories to the site - see the support page. The best information and most compelling stories about our history and our built environment comes from people like you.

The site is not a non-profit, because of the headache of maintaining a non-profit - but it is not-for-profit. Its purpose is to create easier access to historical and architectural information for busy 21st century folks - with a focus on a very local and granular history of the places people might encounter on a daily basis.

Site Credits:

Conception / Keeping things running: Gary Kueber

Authorship: Gary Kueber and Steve Rankin

Initial Design: QuickBrownFox Design

Developers: Christina Dulude, Alisa Herr, Chris Russo, Cuberis, Carlos Valdivia, Barb Baranski

Resources:

History of the Town of Hillsborough 1754-1966

Orange County: 1754-1954

Carrboro, Images of America

Hillsborough, Images of America

Library of Congress (HABS, FSA)

UNC - Chapel Hill (Postcard Collection, Maps)

North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office

Orange County, NC Historic Information Cache (by Steve Rankin; no longer updated)

Orange County Trio - Histories and Tour Guides. Elizabeth Shreve Ryan, Chapel Hill Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 2004.

Pelican Guide to Hillsborough, Lucille Dula.

National Register of Historic Places Hillsborough Historic District Additional Documentation: 01/22/2014. Prepared by Heather Slane.

Photocensus: A Photographic Survey of Buildings in the Hillsborough , N.C. Historic District Built Prior to 1950. Susan McArtor Bellinger. 1991.

Hillsborough, North Carolina General Development Plan 1968-1988

Colonial Inn Cookbook

A Sketch of the School of Miss Nash and Miss Kollock

History of the Churches of Hillsborough

Gardens of Historic Hillsborough

Silhouette: Hillsbrough High Yearbook (1958, 1940, 1938)

Blue Flame: Central High Yearbook (1957)

The Chapel Hill Weekly (newspaper)

The Daily Tar Heel (newspaper)

Hillsborough Recorder (newspaper)

The News of Orange (newspaper)

Yackety Yack (UNC yearbook)

The Orange Echo (Lincoln High School newspaper)

HillLife (Chapel Hill High School yearbook)

Chapel Hill Fire Department History

The Chapel Hill Historical Society (www.chapelhillhistoricalsociety.org and chapelhillhistoricalsociety.org/resources-and-links)

Orange County Environment/Agriculture/Parks & Recreation (OCDEAPR)

USDA aerial photos (Orange County). 1938, 1955, 1975.

Maps:

Claude J. Sauthier map of Hillsborough (1768)

George Tate map of Orange County (1891)

USDA Soil map of Orange County (1918)

Plan of the Town of Hillsboro, by S.T. Alderman (October 1863)

Map of Chapel Hill, as it was in 1875-1885, by H. D. Carter (1934)

Chapel Hill & Carrboro NC Negro Community, by Charles Freeman (May 1944)

Chapel Hill and Suburbs (1934)

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (Chapel Hill/Carrboro). 1911, 1915, 1925

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (Hillsboro). 1888, 1894, 1900, 1905, 1911, 1924, 1943

Map of Hillsboro, by William L. Spoon (1908)

People sources:

Steve Rankin

Tom Campanella

Tom Magnuson

Ernie Dollar

David Southern (RIP, 1946-2021); much of the information on this site would not have been made available without him

drupal statistics