Burlington is a city in Alamance and Guilford counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the principal city of the Burlington, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses anything of Alamance County, in which most of the city is located, and is a portion of the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point CSA. The population was 57,303 at the 2020 census, which makes Burlington the 18th largest city in North Carolina.

Alamance County was created afterward Orange County was partitioned in 1849. Early settlers included several groups of Quakers, many of which remain lively in the Snow Camp area, German farmers, and Scots-Irish immigrants.

The compulsion of the North Carolina Railroad in the 1850s to locate land where they could build, repair and reach maintenance on its track was the genesis of Burlington, North Carolina. The company selected a piece of land slightly west of present-day Graham. On January 29, 1856, the last spikes were driven into the fixed idea tie of the North Carolina Railroad project, uniting the cities of Goldsboro and Charlotte by rail. The neighboring day, the first locomotive passed along the other route. When the iron horse arrived in Alamance County, locals referred to it as “the eighth astonishment of the world”.

Not long after this historic opening, the railroad realized a pressing dependence for fix shops. With Alamance County’s position along the supplementary line, it became the logical substitute for the shops’ location. After several debates approximately where the shops would be located, Gen. Benjamin Trollinger, a unconventional Alamance County manufacturer, made an allow that decided the matter. Gen. Trollinger owned land just northwest of Graham, and he convinced several additional prominent citizens owning next lots to member him and sell their property to the railroad. 57 buildings were build up between 1855 and 1859, including structures for engine and robot shops, carpentry, blacksmithing, houses for workers and railway officials, and company headquarters. For a brief period, railroad directors untouched the declare of recognized name of “Company Shops” to “Vance” (1863–1864), but the town returned to the “Company Shops” moniker in July 1864, and officially incorporating as Company Shops in 1866. Thirty-nine white men and two free African-Americans were employed in or in this area the shops, with twenty enslaved individuals constrained to assist. Sale of town lots soon started, but not surprisingly, the sale of lots was slow until after the Civil War. By 1864, Company Shops numbered not quite 300 persons.