There was a time when thousands of acres of Durham County were covered with tobacco. On a hot July day laborers would follow mules pulling wooden sleds where armfuls of the harvested sticky green leaves were tossed. To see tobacco growing in Durham today, you may have to visit Duke Homestead State Historic Site, home to the Dukes of Durham, founders of the American Tobacco Company.
Fortunes were made from growing tobacco as well as cigarette manufacturing in Durham. Today, only a handful of farmers raise tobacco in the county, and the American Tobacco Campus is now home to trendy high-tech companies, the Durham Bulls and public radio. Even the route trains took to the warehouses is now the American Tobacco Trail. Durham's remaining tobacco farmers are of retirement aged, and the business has changed so much it is uncertain if they will continue production for very long.
Lessons about the heyday of tobacco in Durham are inside the museum walls at Duke Homestead. For many years, tobacco was the main source of income in Durham. Leaves were dried to a golden yellow with heat in tobacco barns, yielding a crop known as "bright leaf." Panels at the site tell the story of tobacco production and the genesis of the American Tobacco Company.
Patriarch Washington Duke wanted to meet the demand of Union soldiers for the bright leaf after the Civil War, so built a small log factory and named his cigarettes "Pro Bono Publico," a Latin phrase meaning "for the public good." His son James Buchanan Duke led the merger of the country's largest tobacco operations and the American Tobacco Company was born. By the turn of the 20th century, it was the world's largest tobacco company.
For more than a century, tobacco was the dominant cash crop in Durham and North Carolina. The break- up of monopolistic tobacco companies, awareness of the negative health effects of smoking, the demise of the tobacco price support system and increased foreign competition in tobacco production all played a part in the diminished importance of tobacco in Durham.
But tobacco still grows at Duke Homestead State Historic where the plants are now about 3 feet high. You can see tobacco barns where the green leaves were cured to a golden yellow and a pack house where leaves were separated into piles based on quality before being taken to market. There, the auctioneer sang out the bids of company buyers and farmers finally were paid for a hard year of labor.
When you visit Duke Homestead Sept. 12, you can see this history and enjoy the Harvest and Hornworm Festival which celebrates the completion of the production cycle. Site staff will lead handing and looping demonstrations and organize a mock auction at the October at the State Fair.
For additional information, please call (919) 477-5498. Duke Homestead is within the Division of State Historic Sites in the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.