About the town » Durham, Durham County, North Carolina, United States

Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County, though portions also extend into Wake County in the east and Orange County in the west. It is the fourth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 233,252 residents as of the 2011 United States census. It is the home of Duke University and North Carolina Central University, and is also one of the vertices of the Research Triangle area (home of the Research Triangle Park). Durham is the core of the four-county Durham-Chapel Hill Metropolitan Area. which has a population of 522,826 as of U.S. Census 2012 Population Estimates. The US Office of Management and Budget also includes Durham as a part of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Combined Statistical Area, which has a population of 1,998,808 as of U.S. Census 2012 Population Estimates . Effective June 6, 2003 the Office of Management and Budget redefined the Federal Statistical Areas and dismantled what had been for decades the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, MSA and split them into two separate MSAs even though the region still functions as a single metropolitan area.