New Book, Miracle Road, Traces Collaborations behind Research Triangle Park
When Governor Luther Hodges stood before 600 business, government, and academic leaders in Raleigh’s Sir Walter Hotel on January 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 (RTP) 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.
Where tobacco farms and forests once dominated, there are now Nobel laureates, life-saving medicines, global technology companies, and tens of thousands of jobs that have drawn families from every corner of the world — but behind that transformation are thousands of decisions, hundreds of discoveries, and people whose names most North Carolinians have never heard—until now.
Miracle Road: The Story of Research Triangle Park, by Allen Paul and Mack Paul, is now available from Duke University Press. Drawing on more than 160 interviews, the book follows the people, institutions, and decisions that helped transform a struggling region into a center for technology and life sciences. Its story reaches beyond land and buildings to the partnerships among universities, business, government, and civic leaders that sustained the Park through decades of change. For economic developers and the construction and real estate communities, it offers a case study in patient investment, institutional collaboration, and the challenges that accompany growth.
About the Authors
Miracle Road is written by a father-and-son team with deep personal roots in the Triangle.
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, DC, and made the unlikely decision to return as a young lawyer in the early 1990s — when most of his peers were heading to New York or the West Coast. In the years since, his parents, extended family, and now his daughter and her husband have all followed him back. His family’s story is, in miniature, the story RTP made possible.
Allen Paul (1939–2026) was a journalist and speechwriter whose previous books include Katyn: Stalin’s Massacre and the Triumph of Truth and College Sports on the Brink of Disaster. Together, the Pauls bring complementary skills to the project: a seasoned narrative writer and a land use attorney who has spent decades working at the intersection of law, planning, and regional development in the Triangle.
NCBiotech served as the administrative host for the research and writing of Miracle Road.
