Located in the piedmont region of North Carolina, most of Cary is in western Wake County, with neighborhood-sized sections in the northeast corner of Chatham County and small portions of southwest Durham County. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 61.05 square miles (158.1 km2), of which 59.94 square miles (155.2 km) is land and 1.11 square miles (2.9 km2) (1.82%) is water. Cary is bordered on the north and east by Raleigh, generally toward the north by Research Triangle Park and Morrisville, on the south by Apex and Holly Springs, and on the west by the Jordan Lake area.
Cary is seated on the boundary between the Durham Basin with its softer sedimentary rocks and the piedmont with its harder metamorphic rocks; both geologic provinces have igneous rock intrusions. The landscape is typically gentle to moderate sloping hills separated by narrow V-shaped valleys, but there are areas with steeper slopes and broader, U-shaped valleys in western Cary, roughly along NC 55 near the Research Triangle Park and north of Green Hope School Road. Cary's average elevation is 495 ft (151 m).
The Cary drainage basin includes three main creeks—the Crabtree, the Swift, and the Walnut—which are all tributaries of the Neuse River. Most streams in the area have narrow floodplains with riverine wetlands, but Crabtree, Middle, Swift, and White Oak Creeks are larger and have broader floodplains. There are several small lakes in the area, most notably Lake Crabtree, created for flood control of Crabtree Creek. Jordan Lake is a large reservoir, flood control, and recreational facility that abuts part of western Cary.
Suburbanization is the typical land use in Cary. However, some areas are still undeveloped forests or agricultural, such as the agricultural areas west of NC 55 in Green Level, Upper Middle Creek and the Carpenter community. There is a mixture of mature conifers and broadleaf trees in Cary's parks, nature preserves, and older subdivisions such as Farmington Woods, Greenwood Forest, and Kildaire Farms because tree preservation was a key design element. According to the Town of Cary Land Use Plan, newer construction in Cary, both residential and commercial, shows "less regard for tree preservation and replanting."
Cary has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) under the Köppen climate classification system, with hot summers, mildly cold winters with 3.2 in (8.1 cm) of snow annually, and several months of pleasant weather each year. Temperature extremes in Cary range from the negatives to over 100 °F (38 °C). Tropical cyclones can affect Cary, usually after weakening substantially from being over land. Some, such as Hurricane Fran in 1996, have caused great damage in the area.
Before the arrival of European settlers, the Tuscarora and Catawba people lived in what is now called Cary. However, their numbers were greatly reduced due to smallpox epidemics, resulting from contact with Europeans who carried the disease and having no prior immunity.
In the 1750s, John Bradford moved to the area and opened an ordinary or inn, giving Cary its first name—Bradford's Ordinary. However, most of the land remained in the hands of two men, both named Nathaniel Jones. Arriving around 1775, Jones of White Plains plantation owned 10,461 acres (4,233 ha) in eastern Cary, while Jones of Crabtree owned most of what is now western Cary. After the Revolutionary War, the community was on the road between the new capital in Raleigh and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In the early 19th-century, Eli Yates added a gristmill and sawmill to the community, while Rufus Jones founded the first free school in the 1840s, along with Asbury Methodist Church, the community's first church.
In 1854, Bradford's Ordinary was linked to a major transportation route when the North Carolina Railroad came through the settlement, followed by the Chatham Railroad in 1868. The railroad tracks were laid mostly by enslaved people. Wake County farmer and lumberman Allison Francis "Frank" Page also arrived in 1854 and is credited with founding the town. For $2,000, Page purchased 300 acres (121.4 ha) surrounding the planned railroad junction and built his home called Pages, a sawmill, and a general store. Page also donated 10 acres (4.0 ha) for a railroad depot.
The community was unofficially known as Page, Page's Siding, Page's Station, Page's Tavern, and Page's Turnout. In 1856, Page added a post office and became the town's first postmaster. Page named the community Cary because of his admiration for Samuel Fenton Cary, head of the Sons of Temperance in North America, who had delivered an oration in Raleigh two months prior.
The American Civil War did not come to Cary until April 16, 1865—the same day Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered—when 5,000 Confederate troops under General Wade Hampton III encamped there. The next day, Raleigh surrendered to Union General William T. Sherman, and Major General Francis Preston Blair Jr. led the XVII Corps (Union Army) into Cary and established headquarters at the Nancy Jones House, the former home of Jones of Crabtree that had become a tavern and stagecoach stop on the road between Raleigh and Chapel Hill. With Blair's arrival, Cary's enslaved population was emancipated; some went to Raleigh and joined the 135th U.S. Colored Troops. Blair remained in Cary until the surrender of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston on April 27, 1865.
Cary's population grew after the Civil War with the completion of the Chatham Railroad junction. Around 1868, the town's first depot was built for the Chatham Railroad, and Page laid out 1 acre (0.40 ha) residential lots and streets, including Academy and Chatham Streets. At the time, most of Cary's men worked for the railroads, but other businesses included a furniture factory, two shingle factories, a tannery, a shoe factory, a brick factory, and a window sash and blind factory. Around 1868, Page also built a Second Empire style hotel for railroad passengers, known today as the Page-Walker Hotel.
Page, Adolphus Jones, and Rufus Jones established Cary Academy, a private boarding school later known as the Female Institute and Cary Female Academy. The two-story school was built in 1870 on Page's land at the end of Academy Street with lumber milled on-site by Page. Other additions to the town included Page's tobacco warehouse, First Methodist Church, First Baptist Church, and the Cary Colored Christian Church (the latter on land donated by Page), along with two free schools for whites and two free schools for blacks.
Cary was incorporated on April 3, 1871, with Page serving as the first mayor. Its boundaries were established as 1 sq mi (2.6 km), with the center being the Chatham Railroad warehouse. Because Page supported temperance, Cary's Act of Incorporation prohibited the sale of whiskey in the town's boundary and its surrounding 2 sq mi (5.2 km); an 1889 addition the Act of Incorporation also banned "any vinous, spirituous or malt liquors, cider or peach brandies". Page left Cary in 1880, following lumber opportunities in Moore County. However, Cary's prohibition law was in place until 1964 when it was superseded by State and county laws.
The Raleigh and Augusta Air–Line Railroad arrived in Cary in 1879, creating Fetner Junction just north of downtown and spurring further growth. Sixteen Cary residents purchased Cary Academy in 1896 and converted it into the private boarding school, Cary High School, which had 248 students from across the state by 1900. When the North Carolina legislature passed a law establishing a system of public high schools in 1907, Cary High School was transferred to the State for $2,750, giving Cary its claim of having the first state-funded public high school in the state. Town bonds and the State funded a new brick school building in 1913; it was expanded in 1939 with WPA assistance. Today that structure survives as the Cary Arts Center.
In the 1920s, the paved Western Wake Highway (now Western Blvd.) connected Cary to Raleigh via automobile, followed by paved roads to Durham and Apex. This enabled Cary's residents to commute for work, and the town's population grew by 64% during the decade. Electricity came to Cary in 1921. For the first time, Cary had housing developments, along with a volunteer fire department and municipal water and sewage system. A Masonic Lodge was added to downtown in the 1920s. During the Great Depression, the Bank of Cary failed, and the town went bankrupt. Conditions were so challenging that Cary had four mayors in two years.
In the 1930s, a new North Carolina State University research farm supported Cary's farmers. One Cary garden club began growing gourds and showed their products and related crafts at the North Carolina State Fair. After the club's first annual Gourd Festival in 1944, they sent exhibits to the International Gourd Society Festival in Pasadena, California and took many prizes This earned Cary the nickname "Gourd Capital of the World", a designation reflected by gourds circling the original version of the town seal. Now named North Carolina Gourd Festival, the annual event moved to the North Carolina State Fairgrounds in 2000.
After World War II, Cary began to attract industry, including the Taylor Biscuit Company (later Austin Foods), which became the town's largest employer with some 200 employees. Cary expanded its original single square mile boundary and created a Planning and Zoning Board in 1949. All the streets in Cary were paved by the early 1950s and residential suburbs began forming around the downtown area, including Veteran Hills, Russell Hills, and Montclair subdivisions. The town gained its first supermarket, Piggy Wiggly, in 1950, followed by the Cary Public Library in 1960, and a town-funded fire department in 1961.
The population and number of developments in Cary continued to increase in the 1960s and 1970s after the opening of the nearby Research Triangle Park (RTP) in 1959. This rapid growth was planned; the State built a four-lane road between Cary and the Research Triangle Park as part of the agreement to attract RTP to North Carolina. Historian Jordan R. Bauer says, "The sleepy town of Cary...was the ideal place for an emerging class of scientific and technical workers". Initially, Cary adopted zoning and other ordinances on an ad hoc basis to control growth and give the town structure, including its first subdivision regulations in 1961 and a zoning and land-use plan in 1963. To deal with the problem of overcrowding in schools, several new schools were constructed in the 1960s. Cary High School was the first school in Wake County to integrate in 1963. Other ways Cary dealt with the rapid growth in the 1960s was adopting subdivision regulations in 1961, updating zoning ordinances and their land use plan in 1963, and connecting to Raleigh's sewer and water systems in the early 1960s.
In 1971, the town created Planned Unit Development (PUD) zoning, which lets a developer plan an entire community before beginning construction, allowing future residents to know where churches, schools, commercial, and industrial areas will be located in advance. Developed on the Pine State Dairy's former Kildaire Farm, the 967-acre (391.3 ha) Kildaire Farms development in Cary was North Carolina's first PUD.
In 1960, Cary's population was 3,356 but by 1970, it had grown to 7,686. To preserve its small-town feel, of Cary formed the Community Appearance Commission in 1972, which focused on regulating the look of downtown through sign ordinances. The Land Dedication Ordinance of 1974 required developers to set aside one acre of green space for every 35 housing units constructed. During the 1980s, Cary created Industrial Performance Districts, which increased the town's tax base by encouraging businesses to build within the town's limits. Cary had its own sewer system by the 1980s. The PUD model became so popular in Cary that 22 more were created between 1980 and 1992.
By 2000, Cary's population had grown to 94,536. Concerned about forty years of steady growth, in 2008 the town council commissioned the Cary Historic Preservation Master Plan to establish a coordinated approach to historic preservation. Cary now has three districts recognized by the National Register of Historic Places: the Carpenter Historic District, the Green Level Historic District, and the Cary Historic District. In addition, the town has designed ten local landmarks which receive a property tax break in exchange for oversight of exterior changes to the structures by the town's Historic Preservation Commission.
Despite its sizable population, Cary is classified as a "town" because that is how it was incorporated with the State; North Carolina has no legal distinction between a city and a town for size. Cary has a council-manager government; the mayor and council members serve a four-year term, with half of the council seats being up for election each odd-numbered year. Four of the six council seats are elected by single-member districts; the remaining two seats are elected as at-large representatives, meaning they must attract a majority of votes across the whole town. Notable mayors include Fred Bond Jr. (1971–1983), Glen Lang (1999–2003), and Harold Weinbrecht (2007–present).
As of August 2022, the town council consists of mayor Harold Weinbrecht and representatives Jennifer Robinson (District A), Don Frantz (District B, Mayor Pro Tem), Jack W. Smith (District C), Ya Liu (District D), Lori Bush (at-large), and Ed Yerha (at-large). On October 9, 2007, Weinbrecht defeated incumbent mayor Ernie McAlister in the 2007 mayoral election. Citizen concerns that rapid growth was adversely affecting infrastructure and environment over the effect rapid growth was having on the town, especially on roads, schools, and the environment, led to McAlister's ouster and Weinbrecht's reelection in 2011, 2015, and 2019.
On December 26, 2009, The Nation reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had secret prisons in the United States, where it held suspected illegal immigrants indefinitely before deportation. It reported that at least one of these secret federal prisons was allegedly located in an office building in Cary. Part of the federal government's Department of Homeland Security, ICE has leased an office in Cary for more than ten years. However, both ICE and the town says that no detainees are kept overnight at this location.
Public transit within the town is provided by GoCary, with six fixed–routes. There is a door-to-door service for senior citizens and riders with disabilities. GoTriangle operates fixed-route buses that serve Wake County and connect to Go transit systems in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.
Amtrak's Silver Star, Carolinian, and Piedmont passenger trains stop at the Cary Station, providing service to Charlotte, New York City, Miami, and intermediate points. Constructed in 1995 and expanded in 2011, the station includes 130 free parking spaces.
In 2010, the League of American Bicyclists designated Cary as one of the fourteen recipients of the first Bicycle-Friendly Community awards for "providing safe accommodation and facilities for bicyclists and encouraging residents to bike for transportation and recreation". Cary maintains over 200 mi (320 km) of bike-friendly road and greenways facilities. In addition, U.S. Bicycle Route 1 (Carolina Connector) and N.C. Bicycle Route #2, (Mountains to Sea), both pass through suburban Cary.
Cary maintains a network of 82 mi (132 km) of greenways and trails that connect neighborhoods and parks throughout the town. The 23 mi (37 km) American Tobacco Trail, built on a retired section of railroad, passes through parts of Cary.
The Raleigh–Durham International Airport (RDU) is north of Cary (Cary provides water to the airport) and covers more than 35 nonstop destinations with twelve carriers. RDU served nearly 8.8 million passengers in 2021. This is down from the pre-COVID-19 pandemic number of 14.2 million passengers a year in 2019.
Cary is linked to areas both in and out of North Carolina via the east-west running Interstate 40, the north-south running U.S. 1, and the east-west running U.S. 64. State highways in Cary include NC 54, NC 55, and NC 540. Another major route in the town is the Cary Parkway.
Cary has many choices for primary care physicians, from alternative medicine to practices that are connected to Duke University Health System, UNC Medical Center, UNC Rex Healthcare, and WakeMed. WakeMed Cary Hospital, a full-service hospital with 208 acute care beds, is also located in Cary.
Duke Energy provides electricity for Cary. Dominion Energy has provided natural gas to Cary since 2019, when it acquired the Public Service Company of North Carolina. Cary's primary water source is the B. Everett Jordan Reservoir (also known as Jordan Lake), which is treated at the Cary/Apex Water Treatment Facility. Water and sewage accounts are overseen by the Town of Cary. Cary also provides bi-weekly curbside recycling.
In 2016, Cary created its Simulated Smart City Program, which allows the town to test and evaluate Internet of Things (IoT) and smart city technologies in its town hall campus. Technologies already tested and expanded into the community include sensors for public parking that reveal available spots, smart street lights that dim when not needed, smart trash and recycling containers that message when they are full, and free outdoor Wi-Fi via beacons. The first town-wide IoT project was a smart water monitoring system with analytics from the SAS Institute, which can detect leaks. The National Recreation and Park Association noted, "These technologies offer more than just cost savings for the city of Cary. They also provide convenient quality-of-life improvements for citizens, and in many cases help lower environmental waste." Cary and SAS also collaborated on an IoT stormwater flood alert system, winning the 2020 IDC Smart Cities North American Awards (Smart Water Category) and the 2020 Government Innovation Award (Leveraging IoT for Increased Flood Protection).
In 2021, Cary installed IoT and smart city technologies that give emergency vehicles faster access through pedestrian crossings, railroad crossings, school zones, and traffic lights. This is the first citywide system like this in North Carolina. Paid for by the town with a matching grant from the U.S Department of Transportation, this project involved fifteen pedestrian crossings, 100 school safety beacons, 205 traffic signals, and railroad crossings.
In late 2021, Cary announced a new tech-focused Center of Excellence that brings together the town, SAS, and Semtech Corporation, to create new community services and expand the digital infrastructure. Connected World says, "In the quest for developing smarter cities across the country, ...the town of Cary, N.C., is one of the smartest towns in the United States".
According to the 2021 census estimate, the median household income in Cary is $113,782 or $55,710 per capita. The percentage of Cary's residents living in poverty is 4.4%, and just 5.9% of its population under the age of 65 lacked health insurance. Between 2017 and 2021, the median value of owner-occupied houses in Cary was $404,300. The homeownership rate (owner-occupied housing units to total units) is 66.8%. However, there are growing concerns about Cary's lack of affordable housing. Over the past twenty years, Cary has added 10,000 jobs earning $35,000 or less; however, the cost of housing has increased significantly. The Town of Cary says that less than 20% of its employees can afford to live in the town. The median rental cost in Cary is $1,392 per month. The cost of living in Cary is rated at 115, with 100 being the national average.
Notable technology companies located in Cary include ABB, Epic Games, Garmin, HCL Technologies, IntelliScanner Corporation, Lockheed Martin 3D Solutions, SAS Institute, and Xerox.
Manufacturers located in Cary include Austin Foods/Kellogg's which makes snack foods, and Lord Corporation which makes adhesives, coatings, and motion management devices for aerospace and automobiles. Cotton Incorporated is a non–profit located in Cary which conducts worldwide research and promotes the use of cotton.
According to Cary's 2021 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the town are:
