Durham,
North Carolina (population
187035 in 2000 census) is located in the Heartland of NC. Beautiful
weather with three growing seasons, and central location made this area
ideal for agriculture, education, medicine, and a hub of economic
activities.
Forbes Magazine lists Raleigh-Durham, NC as #3 on the
Top Best Places to live and work in the United States. Durham's
tobacco community of blue-collar workers with unshakable values and
work-ethics, is also known world-wide as the City of
Medicine USA. The combined annual payroll of Durham's 300 medical and
health-related businesses is over $1.5 billion. The medical industry
provides employment for 28% of the population.
Time
Magazine extolled the medical facilities here
in a 36 page article listing Duke
University Medical Center as #4 medical center
in the US, #2 in physical therapy, #1 in physician assistants, #2
healthiest city for women, #9 in microbiology, and #5 in
pharmacology/toxicology. US News has called Duke among the best Graduate
Schools in the United States. The VA
Medical Center is listed in the top 11% of all
hospitals nationally, and has been cited for outstanding work in
Geriatric Research. (The VA Medical Center research funding in FY02 was
$14,000,000.00)
The famed Research
Triangle Park is located in
Durham and 50% of the biotech firms based in North Carolina are located
in Durham.
Education and family are valued in Durham, which is home to the famed Duke
University. One of the world's
leading institutions for education, research and medical care, Duke
began as a rural schoolhouse in 1838. Higher education is also served in
Durham by North
Carolina Central University, Durham
Technical Community College,
Center for Employment Training-Research Triangle Park, Dudley Beauty
College, Carolina Beauty College 3, and Watts School of Nursing.
Long a hotbed of alternative journalism, a community of new Southern
writers has sprung up in Durham: Claude Edgerton, Laurel Goldman, Allan
Gurganus, Reynolds Price, and Lee Smith. The hot and edgy magazine
DoubleTake is now on hiatus, but The
Independent, and the Africa News
Service are still making their journalistic mark.
The black race population percentage is significantly above the NC
average, as is the percentage of population with a bachelor's degree (or
higher). North Carolina Central University, a black university, and Pear
Street, (known as the black Wall Street), began attracting upper middle
class blacks back in the late 1920's. Many of Durham's Historic
Landmarks are markers of Afro-American history and influence.
And Durham has not forgotten tobacco. When faced with a dying downtown
area, the business leaders of Durham commissioned a new baseball stadium
modeled after Baltimore's venerable Camden Yards. Durham's minor
league team, the Bulls (named in
1902 for Bull Durham - tobacco, not the movie), now draw 10,000 people
downtown for an average game.
Butner, NC, Cary,
NC, Carrboro,
NC, Chapel
Hill, NC, Farrington, NC, and
Hillsboro, NC, are all within 17 miles of Durham.
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