According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 2.3 square miles (6.0 km2), all land.

A train station was erected, and the Atlantic Land and Improvement Company plotted one square mile of streets centered around it.

Around that time, Pates Supply Company, a general store, was established and became the largest business in Pembroke.

[14] Due to their predominance in the community, the town lacked strict adherence to many Jim Crow norms common in the South in early 20th century.

[15] Under the town's incorporating act, its citizens elected a mayor and a board of commissioners every year.

Politically, the town fell under the control of its white minority, though by 1917 the Lumbee community had grown rapidly and was challenging this state of affairs.

A white delegation went to Raleigh and petitioned the North Carolina General Assembly to alter the act.

In 1945 a group of Lumbees petitioned the governor to support democratic reform in the municipal government.

Two years later, the town returned to an elected government and Pembroke chose its first Lumbee mayor.

In the 1950s, those who identified as Native American chose the name Lumbee, after what was later renamed the Lumber River.

It boasts the safest campus of the UNC schools in U.S. News & World Report and is among the nation's most diverse.