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Town Center Plan
January 2007
Introduction
Overview
To honor its past and create a vibrant focus
for the community into the future, the
Town of Morrisville is working to create a
Town Center in the area around its historic
crossroads. The preparation of this Town
Center Plan completes the first step in this
process: drafting a plan that describes
the community’s vision for this area. This
document summarizes the existing conditions
in the project area, describes the public
planning process that the Town conducted
to share information and solicit community
input, presents the final design prepared
with assistance from the consulting team
retained by the Town, and lays out a series
of implementation strategies to pursue this
vision for the Town Center over time. The
story behind this plan begins 150 years ago
with the birth of the town.
The Birth of Morrisville
In the mid-nineteenth century, North
Carolina was known as the “Rip Van Winkle
State”, locked in a deep economic slumber,
with large expanses of its interior cut off
from the outside world. To help change this,
state leaders launched a grand civic project
to build a railroad across the Piedmont that
would link Charlotte with Goldsboro and an
existing rail line that connected to the state’s
largest port in Wilmington.
In 1850, surveyors were sent out to assess
the terrain. They found the best route ran
along a ridge line between the Neuse and
Cape Fear Rivers. 12 miles west of Raleigh,
they came to Crabtree Creek and decided to
site a depot. An enterprising local business-
man named Jeremiah Morris donated land for
a station, and the site lay at a rural crossroads
that could help feed the rail line with passen-
gers and freight. Morrisville was born.
Morrisville at a Crossroads
A century and a half later, Morrisville is
once again at a crossroads. But now it
is a crossroads of the region, with great
access to employment centers like Research
Triangle Park and major transportation
hubs like Interstate 40 and Raleigh-Durham
Airport. (See Map 1) As a result of this
outstanding location and the rapid growth
of the region, our community has nearly
tripled in population in the last seven years.
At present, the town is adding about 4.5
new residents every day. In the midst of
this growth spurt, Morrisville’s small town
character is beginning to disappear. As a
result, there is widespread interest in re-
establishing a center of community where
our paths might frequently cross and where
others will know when they have arrived in
Morrisville.
In the 1850s, the North Carolina Railroad sited a depot
near Crabtree Creek, and Morrisville was born. This
1937 photo shows Morrisville mailman, Walter Churchill,
at the Morrisville Depot, with Lettie and Eunice Bullock
in the background. To the left is the Maynard Store that
still stands today along Chapel Hill Road. (Photo: North
Carolina State Archives)
From its earliest days, Morrisville has benefitted from
its location at a crossroads, which helped supply the
rail line with passengers and freight. This detail from
an 1870s map of Wake County shows that the original
crossroads lay at the intersection of Church Street and
what today is Morrisville-Carpenter Road. (Map: Wake
County Historical Society)