Getting to Know Durham County

Durham County’s biggest metropolis — and county seat — is the city of Durham. Both the city and the county are named for Bartlett Durham, a doctor who donated part of his property to the North Carolina Railroad. The stop that was built on his land, Durham’s Station, eventually lent its name to the surrounding city and county. Besides the city of Durham, the county is notable for being home to the majority of Research Triangle Park. RTP is one of the country’s oldest and most prominent high-tech research and development parks. Created in 1959, RTP brought together the research brainpower and capabilities of North Carolina State University, Duke University, and UNC at Chapel Hill to draw tech companies to the state. Today, RTP is the largest research park in the country and a research and development powerhouse. RTP is a city unto itself, covering 7,000 acres and housing more than 375 companies.

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.