Wake County

Wake County, established on March 12, 1771, has a population of 1,072,203 and a total employment of 553,542 (51.6%). The county seat is Raleigh, which is also the state capital and home of NC State University’s main campus.

The county’s two biggest employers, the Wake County Public School System and NC State, are both in education, while healthcare providers Wake Medical and Rex Hospital rank third and fourth, respectively. SAS Institute, an NC State spinoff company co-founded by former professor Jim Goodnight, ranks fifth with nearly 14,000 employees and is one of the largest privately held software companies in the world.

The county’s most profitable agricultural product remains tobacco, while the largest farm product by acreage is soybeans. By total number, the largest livestock produced is cattle and calves.

The county’s largest manufacturer is Cisco Systems Inc., which is the second largest division of the multinational company and the county’s seventh largest employer overall with about 3,400 employees. It manufactures and sells networking hardware, telecommunications  equipment and other high-technology services and products. 

With more than 35,000 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students, NC State is the second largest of the eight post-secondary schools located in the county, trailing only educational partner Wake Technical Community College, a two-year school that offers associate degrees to its 74,000 students. Wake Tech is one of 10 community colleges participating in the Community College Collaboration (C3) program, a dual-admission program offering alternative pathways for students who have proven academic success who are seeking to enroll at NC State.

The other higher education schools are William Peace University, Meredith College, Campbell University’s Adrian Wiggins School of Law, Saint Augustine’s College, Shaw University and the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Wake County Public School System ranks as the 15th largest public school district in the country and consists of 27 high schools, 33 middle schools, 104 elementary schools and eight specialized schools. There are also nine accredited charter schools and 31 private schools.

 

NC State is Here

Literally, NC State is in the middle of Wake County. It’s three  geographic precincts — main campus, Reedy Creek and Lake Wheeler—cover some 4,780 of Wake County’s 548,480 acres, according to the university surveyor’s office.

Once a compact campus, bounded by Western Boulevard to the south and Hillsborough Street the north and split down the middle by railroad tracks, the university now includes Centennial Campus, the Medical Research Campus, an arboretum, a research forest, a historic mill, an off-campus athletics complex, nature trails and greenways.

It has become a sprawling urban home to the largest campus and largest student population in the 17-institution University of North Carolina system. (This map from NC State transportation shows how long it takes, in minutes, to walk from place to place on campus.)

The North Carolina School of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts opened in 1889, thanks to a 400-acre tract of land given by philanthropist Richard  Stanhope Pullen. In its earliest days, it was on the far western edge of North Carolina’s capital city, served only by dirt roads and street cars.

Raleigh has since engulfed the campus, creating a vibrant partnership in one of the country’s most desirable living locations. [Read more.]

Centennial Campus

Lonnie Poole Golf Course

Biomedical Research Campus

Spring Hill House

Schenck Forest

Yates Mill Pond County Park

Equine Health Center

 

Pride of the Pack

NC State’s First Gift

Richard Stanhope Pullen

“Don’t be a pilot; be an engineer”

Katherine Stinson

 

Informing the World

John Alsey Park

 

Burley Mitchell

Apple COO Jeff Williams, a 1994 graduate of Sanderson High School and a ???? graduate of NC State, was elevated to the chief operations officer of Apple Inc. in

Connie B. Gay

Scotty McCreery

 

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