Miracle Road: The Story of Research Triangle Park

By Allen Paul and Mack Paul

Duke University Press, $35.95 Cloth

When North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges stood before 600 business, government and academic leaders in Raleigh's Sir Walter Hotel on Jan. 9, 1959, he announced that funds had been raised to build a research park in an area locals described as nothing but "possums and pines."

Few in that room imagined that 67 years later, Research Triangle Park would be the largest science and research park in the United States — home to more than 350 companies, 65,000 workers, and scientific discoveries that have changed medicine, agriculture, computing and everyday life around the world.

Written in narrative nonfiction style, “Miracle Road: The Story of Research Triangle Park” is how the state pulled off one of the greatest economic transformations in American history — told through the businessmen who mortgaged their reputations, the governors who recruited companies across continents, the scientists whose discoveries changed the world, and the community leaders whose decisions made it all possible.

Based on more than 160 exclusive interviews conducted over four years, “Miracle Road” traces RTP's origins in the 1950s through its emergence as a worldwide model for research-driven economic development. The book chronicles four distinct eras of RTP's growth: its rocky founding and near collapse before IBM's landmark 1965 decision to locate its largest facility in the Park; the rise of iconic companies like Burroughs Wellcome and the birth of the life science cluster; the setbacks of the dot-com era and the recalibration that followed; and RTP's current transformation into a mixed-use innovation hub drawing Apple, Fidelity and the world's leading biomanufacturers.

Today, as RTP undertakes its most sweeping reinvention (RTP 3.0) since its founding, that commitment is being tested again. “Miracle Road” arrives at exactly the right moment: as a reminder of what this place has survived, what it has built, and what it is still capable of becoming. 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:  Mack Paul, cofounder of Morningstar Law Group, former chair of the Greater Triangle Regional Council, and instructor on land use law at North Carolina State University and North Carolina Central University, was born in Cary when its population was barely 3,500 people. He left as a child when his father took a job in Washington, D.C., and made the unlikely decision to return as a young lawyer in the early 1990s. 

Allen Paul (1939–2026) was a journalist and speechwriter.

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