Cary is a town in Wake and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina and is allocation of the Raleigh–Cary, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area. According to the 2020 Census, its population was 174,721, making it the seventh largest municipality in North Carolina, and the 148th largest in the United States. In 2021, the town’s population had increased to 176,987.

Cary began as a railroad village and became known as an educational center in the late 19th and forward 20th centuries. In April 1907, Cary High School became the first state-funded public high school in North Carolina. The establishment of the welcoming Research Triangle Park in 1959 resulted in Cary’s population doubling in a few years, tripling in the 1970s, and doubling in both the 1980s and 1990s. Cary is now the location of numerous technology companies, including the world’s largest privately held software company.

In Cary, 68.4% of adults withhold a bachelor’s degree or higher, which is beyond the make a clean breast average. In 2021, it was identified as the safest mid-sized city in the United States, based upon 2019 FBI data. It also has a median household income of $107,463, higher than the county average of $83,567 or the acknowledge average of $56,642.

Before the arrival of European settlers, the Tuscarora people lived in what is now called Cary. In the 1750s, John Bradford moved to the Place and opened an unsigned or inn, giving Cary its first name—Bradford’s Ordinary. However, most of the estate remained in the hands of two men, both named Nathaniel Jones. Arriving nearly 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 in the company of the extra capital in Raleigh and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. In the upfront 19th-century, Eli Yates added a gristmill and sawmill to the community, while Rufus Jones founded the first forgive school in the 1840s, along in the expose of Asbury Methodist Church, the community’s first church.