Chapel Hill is a town in Durham and Orange counties, North Carolina, United States.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care are a major part of the economy and town influence.

The Occaneechi Indians lived in the area of what is now Hillsborough, north of Chapel Hill, prior to European settlement.

[6] The area was the home place of early settler William Barbee of Middlesex County, Virginia, whose 1753 grant of 585 acres on the north and south side of "Lick Branch"[7] from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville was the first of two land grants in what is now the Chapel Hill-Durham area.

[12][13] Four in ten Chapel Hillians were enslaved at the start of the Civil War, and about half of the town was Black.

[14] In April 1865, as the war ended, the 9th Michigan Cavalry rode into Chapel Hill and occupied the university and the town for more than two weeks.

[15] In 1969, a year after the town fully integrated its schools, Chapel Hill elected Howard Lee as mayor.

[16] Serving from 1969 to 1975, Lee helped establish Chapel Hill Transit, the town's bus system, and the Mountains-to-Sea trail.

[17] Some 30 years later, in 2002, the state passed legislation to provide free service to all riders on local buses.

The bus operations are funded through Chapel Hill and Carrboro town taxes, federal grants, and UNC student tuition.

All buses carry GPS transmitters to report their location in real-time to a tracking web site.

However, most of Chapel Hill's borders are adjacent to unincorporated portions of Orange and Durham Counties rather than shared with another municipality.

[24] According to estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau, over the three-year period of 2005 through 2007, the median income for a household in the town was $51,690, and for a family was $91,049.

Having gone through several revisions, the seal, which also serves as the town logo, was most recently updated in 2005 to a visually simpler version.

[33][34] Though Chapel Hill is a principal town of a large metropolitan area, it retains a relatively small-town feel.

[39] One of the town's hallmark features is the giant sundial, located in the green square in front of the planetarium on Franklin Street.

[40] Meadowmont and Southern Village both have shopping centers, green space where concerts, movies, and other outdoor events have taken place, community pools, and schools.

Hailed as one of America's Foodiest Small Towns by Bon Appétit,[41] Chapel Hill is rapidly becoming a hot spot for pop American cuisine.

[43] In the realm of popular music, James Taylor, George Hamilton IV, Southern Culture on the Skids, Superchunk, Polvo, Archers of Loaf, Ben Folds Five, The Kingsbury Manx, Spider Bags and more recently Porter Robinson, are among the most notable musical artists and acts whose careers began in Chapel Hill.

U2 also performed at Kenan on the first American date of their 1983 War Tour, where Bono climbed up to the top of the stage, during pouring rain and lightning, holding up a white flag for peace.

The Durham–Orange Light Rail line, which would have run between Chapel Hill and Durham, entered planning and engineering phases in August 2017.