Northern Durham

Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial

(Photo by Donald Burgess Tilley Jr. All information from Commemorative Landscapes of NC) Location is imprecise. This book-shaped granite war memorial honors both the soldiers who died in the Vietnam War and those veterans who are still living. The creators of the monument wanted to establish an area of tranquility. The memorial consists of five...

Lochmoor

Lochmoor was most well known as the 'country estate' of Edward James Parrish, Durham's first tobacco auctioneer, and builder of the first brick warehouse in Durham.

Holman Family Cemetery

Marker for Lonnie Holman (1897-1925) leans against a tree, August 2021 (N. Levy). In a wooded area nestled against the edges of the Horton Hills and Argonne Hills subdivisions, this untended burial ground appears to be linked to the family of Dilsy Holman and her descendants. Likely born enslaved in the 1820s, she and her offspring first appear by...

Catsburg Country Store

Catsburg Store, 04.07.87 (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper)

Avila Retreat Center

The main entrance to the Avila Retreat Center, 7.28.2019 (N. Levy) In 1957, a widowed schoolteacher named Lola Latta Terry and her son sold over forty acres west of the road to Roxboro to the Carmelite order of Catholic nuns, who appear to have begun building this facility soon thereafter. It remained in the possession of the Carmelites until 1980...

Little River High School

Little River HIgh School, 1950s (Courtesy The Herald-Sun Newspaper) 01.14.12

1111 Paul Rd.

2019 (Marie Austin Realty) 2019 (Marie Austin Realty)

Orange Factory

Orange Factory was established in 1852 (so named because it was the first factory in then-Orange County,) by John Douglas and William Lipscomb on the banks of the Little River. The Little River was one of the three rivers of now-North Durham County (the Eno, the Flat, and the Little) that drew settlement and the establishment of industry that utilized the water power that the rivers provided. Much of this settlement came east from Hillsborough, the county seat.

Durham Regional Hospital

--- Prison Farm / County Home, 1880s. (Courtesy Durham County Library / North Carolina Collection) On November 15th, 1881, the County Commissioners purchased a tract of 138 acres of land on Roxboro Road, then about three miles north of Durham, from WA Wilkerson for $1393.75 and erected a frame house for "the care of the aged, indigent and infirm."...

Snow Hill Plantation / Farm

1955 aerial One of the earliest plantations in what would become northern Durham County, Snow Hill was established by William Johnston in 1763. He obtained several large tracts of land from Henry McCulloh. David Southern notes: McCulloh and Granville were mega-speculators with competing claims, and though they reached a sort of truce ultimately...