Duke Homestead

Duke Homestead, four miles north of downtown, is the preserved farm and tobacco workshop where the Duke family launched the business that would dominate American tobacco for half a century. The site includes the original frame farmhouse, two early tobacco factories, and the Tobacco Museum — a thorough and surprisingly unflinching history of the industry, its economic impact, and its public-health legacy.

The site is a State Historic Site, free to enter, and a half-day visit. Guided tours are offered Tuesday to Saturday. Combine with a visit to the Bennett Place historic site fifteen minutes west for a fuller picture of post-Civil-War Durham.

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A story
Washington Duke returned from the Civil War to his farm north of Durham with fifty cents in his pocket and a stock of brightleaf tobacco. He and his sons hand-rolled the first cigarettes in the small log smokehouse here, sold them to passing soldiers, and within thirty years had built American Tobacco — the largest tobacco company on earth, and the basis of the family wealth that would later fund Duke University.

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