Whose line is it anyway: Border between Carrboro and Chapel Hill meanders

Many local residents walk their dogs and ride their bikes without knowing if they are in Chapel Hill or Carrboro.

“I’m not too positive where one begins and the other ends, but I think I would be exiting Chapel Hill once I reach Papa Johns on Franklin,” UNC senior Deonta Woods said.

Serena Singh, a first-year and member of UNC’s marathon team, often runs between the two towns, but said if she wasn’t a member of the marathon team, she really wouldn’t know where the border is.

“When I’m running down Rosemary Street, if I keep going onto East Weaver Street and onto North Greensboro Street, then I know I’m entering the Carrboro area,” Singh said. “Oftentimes, though, I only know I’m in Carrboro if buildings around me have signs with the word ‘Carrboro’ in it.”

Although the two towns sometimes appear connected, there is a definitive, legal boundary between them.

“The jurisdictional boundary as well as the extra-territorial jurisdiction (between Chapel Hill and Carrboro) is clearly demarcated,” said Nikhil Kaza, professor in UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning.

Carrboro Board of Aldermen member Bethany Chaney said the line between the two meanders a little bit. It’s not just one simple straight line from the northern part to the southern part of the town.

“If you were just talking about downtown, it would be about where Merritt Mill Road is and it goes through the Northside neighborhood and it sort of curves around certain parts of neighborhoods, so it gets a little messy,” Chaney said.

“We’re not neatly divided by Merritt Mill Road either — between Crook’s Corner and St. Paul AME church, St. Paul actually straddles the line.”

There are also signs on Estes Drive and on Homestead Road marking the line dividing the two towns as well as a big, swirly Carrboro sign on the corner of Merritt Mill Road next to St. Paul AME Church.

Singh said she likes how the two towns flow together, but it’d be nice if there was more distinction.

“Chapel Hill and Carrboro work great together, but it’d be nice to be able to tell them apart because they are different places with their own qualities that draw people in to visit both,” she said.

Chaney said the closeness of the towns wasn’t intentional and that Carrboro actually used to be considered rural.

She said the downtown part of Carrboro didn’t always reach the Chapel Hill border.

“The two towns just began to grow together; it’s not that they were built right next to each other with a boundary, but more so that the two towns grew toward each other,” Chaney said. “As we built more roads and neighborhoods and streets and such it just turned out that they began to touch over time.”

Chaney said every so often the thought comes up to merge the two municipalities, but Carrboro isn’t interested.

“We like the seamlessness, being able to walk from Carrboro to Chapel Hill and the other way around, and we like how the town cultures vary,” Chaney said. “It’s unique enough and it makes sense to keep our small town a small town.”

@laurentalley13

city@dailytarheel.com