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Fun Facts About Hillsborough

• Before Orange County was founded in 1752, five Native-American tribes lived in the area. One was the Eno-Occaneechi Indian tribe, many of whose descendants still live in the Hillsborough area. Today, the Occaneechi Indian Village is a restored Native-American community, located on the Eno River where tribes in western North Carolina and south-central Virginia crossed along a trading path.

• Hillsborough was laid out in 1754 by William Churton on 400 acres where the Occaneechi Indian Trading Path crossed the Eno River. The town has been called “a museum without walls,” because its historic district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and boasts more than 100 late 18th and early 19th Century structures.

• Hillsborough was the site of the momentous North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1788, during which the convention delegates refused to ratify the Constitution until it included a Bill of Rights.

• The Old Orange County Courthouse has been cited by the Library of Congress as one of the finest examples of Greek-Revival architecture in the United States. It was built in 1844 and was the fourth structure on the site, after two Colonial courthouses (ca. 1755 and 1782), a gaol (jail), the gaoler’s house and kitchen, a Market-House, and whipping post and stocks.

• The Old Town Clock in the cupola of the present courthouse is said to have been a royal gift to the town in 1769. It hung first in St. Matthews Church of England (now the Presbyterian Church), then the tower of the Market-House. The “new” bell installed in the Old Orange County Courthouse in April 1997 was actually cast in 1747 and previously hung in St. Luke’s Church in Cannock (Staffordshire), England.

• A stone marker on the southeast corner of North Churton and East King Street in downtown Hillsborough, dated March 17, 1776, marks the spot where Daniel Boone led a small band of settlers to Kentucky, a virtual wilderness then. They were fleeing the unrest in the 13 colonies before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Daniel Boone went on to become a trailblazer and legendary frontiersman. A number of Hillsborough facilities, including the Daniel Boone Village on South Churton Street, are named for him.

• The only complete set of Colonial weights and measures in the U.S. can be found at the Orange County Historical Museum in Hillsborough.

• Hillsborough’s Ayr Mount Historic Site, built c.1815 on 265 acres overlooking the Eno River, is one of North Carolina’s finest Federal-era plantation homes.

• The Rev. Robert Burwell and his wife Margaret Anna Burwell operated The Burwell School Historic Site from 1837-1857 in downtown Hillsborough. The Burwell School was one of North Carolina’s leading Presbyterian schools for “young ladies.” Open to the public for tours, the school is the only one remaining of Hillsborough’s numerous good early 19th-century schools.

• In the last days of the Civil War, the AlexanderDickson farm was headquarters for Confederate General Wade Hampton. Wade used the farm’s outbuilding as his office. On April 18, 1865, Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and J.C. Breckenridge and Postmaster General John H. Reagan all met in “the office.” The Alexander Dickson House has sometimes been called “the last headquarters of the Confederacy.” This is an appropriate title in the sense that it was the last headquarters of the commander of the largest armies to surrender to Union forces, larger even than the army that Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Today, the Alexander Dickson House serves as the Orange County Visitors Center and is home to the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough.

• The Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area in Hillsborough has an elevation of 867 feet, the highest point in Orange County and one of the highest points in eastern North Carolina.

• Some of the county’s more exotic agricultural enterprises include a shitake mushroom and truffle farm, and a miniature donkey and mule farm. The truffle farm, located off Orange Grove Road near Hillsborough, is one of only two in the United States, because this fancy fungus is particular about where it will grow.