Durham, NC (DNC)

Ticket Revenue

FY 2011

$2,458,947

Station Ridership

FY 2011

74,783

Note: Fiscal year is from
October through September.

In 1996, North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and the city of Durham jointly opened a staffed interim station in downtown Durham, a double-wide modular unit to provide accessible ticketing, a waiting room, baggage handling and restrooms. It was staffed by a full-time Amtrak station agent. This structure replaced a small shelter that the city had used for the previous six years.

The newly-restored historic Walker Warehouse is the site for Amtrak service beginning in spring of 2009. The new station is a joint venture of NCDOT and the city of Durham, across the tracks from the city's new “Durham Station” transit terminal where city and regional transit buses, and Greyhound/Trailways will be located. The new station facility will be part of the West Village redevelopment project whose developers purchased seven former tobacco warehouses and factory buildings from the Ligget Group for $15,450,000 in 2005. The buildings, constructed between 1884 and 1949, are being converted into loft apartments, office and lab space, retail, and entertainment space.

NCDOT entered into an agreement with Blue Devil Partners, developers of the Liggett redevelopment project, to lease and up-fit one third of the Walker Warehouse to serve as the new Durham Amtrak Station. The city of Durham is responsible for 25 percent of the lease costs for the Walker Warehouse. NCDOT also constructed a new 600-foot boarding platform with a 300-foot canopy over part of it and a covered walkway extending from the station building to the new platform. This work was funded with $1.25 million in federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) funds) and was completed in the spring of 2009.

Durham began as a depot for the North Carolina Railroad in 1853. A country physician, Bartlett S. Durham, donated land to the railroad, and that depot was subsequently named Durham Station. Prior to the arrival of the railroad, the area was primarily agricultural, with a few businesses catering to travelers along the Hillsborough Road.

The community of Durham grew slowly before the American Civil War, but expanded rapidly afterwards; the city was chartered in 1869. Much growth was due to the expanding tobacco industry, as soldiers who became fond of the area’s Brightleaf tobacco and the popularity of this mild leaf spread. Numerous orders came to Green’s tobacco company; W.T. Blackwell partnered with Green and renamed the company the Bull Durham Tobacco Company. The name “Bull Durham” is supposedly taken from the bull on the British Coleman’s Mustard, which Mr. Blackwell, who was fond of it, mistakenly thought was manufactured in Durham, England. The other dominant tobacco company in the city was Washington Duke’s Duke & Sons Tobacco, and their growth soon rivaled that of the textile mills. Much of the city’s architecture dates from this period of 1890 to 1930.

In 1910 Dr. James E. Shepherd founded North Carolina Central University, the nation’s first publicly-supported liberal arts college for African Americans. In 1924 James Buchanan Duke established a philanthropic foundation in honor of his father, Washington Duke, to support Trinity College in Durham. This college changed its name to Duke University and built a large campus and hospital a mile west of Trinity College (now Duke’s East Campus).

Freeway construction in the 1960s resulted in loss of many of the historic districts in Durham, along with available funds for urban renewal. Durham’s growth rekindled in the 1970s and 1980s with the growth of the Research Triangle Park to its south, as well as the beginnings of downtown revitalization. Durham has come to style itself as the “City of Medicine,” due (among other things) to the renown of the Duke University hospital and the biotechnology and research going on in the Research Triangle Park.

Duke University hosts many unique research establishments, including the Duke Lemur Center, which is a research and study center housing over 260 prosimian primates, the largest collection of lemurs outside of Madagascar. The Duke University Phytotron is also conducting research on global climatic changes. Durham is also the home to the Rhine Center, the foremost institute studying experimental parapsychology and ESP. The 1983 science fiction movie about memory transferal, Brainstorm was set at the Research Triangle Park, and was actress Natalie Wood’s last film.

This facility has a waiting room and is staffed by Amtrak employees.

Durham is served by six daily trains.