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Durham built its 19th-century fortune on a particular accident: when Union and Confederate soldiers met here at the end of the Civil War in April 1865, they discovered a local tobacco that both sides preferred to what they'd been smoking. The resulting demand made fortunes for the Duke family, whose tobacco money then funded Duke University, opened in 1924 with a West Campus modeled on Oxford and an East Campus whose Georgian brick remains one of the more graceful college grounds in the American South. The American Tobacco Campus, a former cigarette factory complex, now houses restaurants, offices, and a minor league baseball stadium, its water tower still reading Lucky Strike in faded paint.

Today Durham anchors one corner of the Research Triangle alongside Raleigh and Chapel Hill, and that combination of university money, biotech investment, and a strong arts scene has transformed a city that was genuinely struggling in the 1990s into one of the most talked-about mid-size cities in America.

The Durham Food Hall, the old Brightleaf Square tobacco warehouses converted into shops and bars, and the Eno River State Park on the city's northern edge give the place a texture that feels earned rather than invented. The city has also become a notable food destination, with chefs like Ashley Christensen anchoring a restaurant scene that punches far above a city of 280,000.