AREA MAP AND HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CARY

The Town of Cary, situated in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, is located in Wake and Chatham Counties. The Town adjoins the City of Raleigh, which is the state capital and county seat, at its southwestern boundary. The Town serves as a major hub of residential development for persons employed by the State of North Carolina, North Carolina State University and is adjacent to the Research Triangle Park, which is an industrial, governmental and scientific research area.

A settlement called Bradford's Ordinary was founded in this location in 1750. In 1854, a farmer and lumberman named Allison Francis “Frank” Page and his wife, Catherine “Kate” Raboteau Page bought three hundred acres of land and established several enterprises. He named his development after Samuel Fenton Cary, a prohibition leader from Ohio whom Page admired. Frank Page was Cary’s first developer, mayor, postmaster and railroad agent. Page, whose main business was a sawmill, laid out the first streets of Cary and built a hotel. What became known as the Page-Walker Hotel is now an arts and history center on Town Hall campus, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The extension of the railroads through Cary and a junction of the Seaboard and North Carolina railroads enabled the town to flourish, and on April 6, 1871, the Town of Cary was incorporated.

One of Frank and Kate Page's sons is Cary's most famous son. Walter Hines Page (1855-1918) was an editor, publisher, social reformer and proponent of public education. He was ambassador to Great Britain during World War I. The British honored him with a tablet in Westminster Abbey.

A prestigious, private boarding school developed here in the late 1800's and this school later became famous as the first public high school in North Carolina. The school was located on the site currently occupied by Cary Elementary School.

With development of Research Triangle Park in the 1960s, Cary began to grow as a bedroom community for the park from a quiet town of a few thousand people. In 1963, the charter was amended by the State Legislature to provide for a Council-Manager form of Government. Two council members and the mayor are elected at-large, and one council member is elected from each of four voting districts. In 1971, the Legislature passed an act which revised and consolidated the charter of the Town of Cary. Growth escalated during the 1970s, with the population nearly tripling to 21,763. The population doubled during the 1980s, doubled again during the 1990s, and as of June 30, 2005, is estimated to be 111,039.